Singer & Sons “Modern by Singer” catalogue illustrating the present model. In 1951, New York furniture maker Singer and Sons collaborated with designer Gio Ponti to bring Italian design to American audiences. The line of furniture, “Modern by Singer,” became an instant success. The present games table and set of four chairs were acquired from Singer and Sons through Salterini between 1956 and 1957. As a leading designer of his time, Ponti was integral to promoting Italian design around the world. Describing a room that he designed for an exhibition of Italian design at the Brooklyn Museum in 1950, he said that “the Americans, educated to the most direct functionalism, will be scandalized with this ‘dining room’, which is created more to admire than to adopt.” The Singer collaboration, however, brought Italian design into the American home with works that were both high quality and visually appealing but more broadly accessible.
While Ponti did intend these pieces made with Singer to be purchased and used, his rejection of pure functionalism remains clear. The sculptural shapes created by the present chair arms emphasize their elegant formal composition while the gentle tapering of the legs defied manufacturing efficiency. In his architectural work, Ponti sought to disintegrate volume and lift the viewer’s eye upwards. His furniture achieves the same goal of weightlessness, bringing Ponti’s grand vision of space into American domestic life.
“Even today we talk abroad about the ‘Italian line’, but this ‘Italian line’ does not exist: the Italians are the ones that in their simultaneous diversity constitute this Italian phenomenon. There isn't that tenacious regularity and unity of taste, which identifies the Swedish or Danish or German or French productions. There isn't an Italian taste, not a formal Italian standard; there are only the 'Italians,'”
—Gio Ponti, Domus, March 1954Provenance
Singer & Sons, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph S. Oettinger, Scarsdale, acquired from the above, 1957
Thence by descent
Acquired from the above by the present ownerLiterature
Singer & Sons: Modern by Singer, sales catalogue, New York, circa 1956, n.p.
Artist Biography
Gio Ponti
Italian • 1891 - 1979
Among the most prolific talents to grace twentieth-century design, Gio Ponti defied categorization. Though trained as an architect, he made major contributions to the decorative arts, designing in such disparate materials as ceramics, glass, wood and metal. A gale force of interdisciplinary creativity, Ponti embraced new materials like plastic and aluminum but employed traditional materials such as marble and wood in original, unconventional ways.
In the industrial realm, he designed buildings, cars, machinery and appliances — notably, the La Cornuta espresso machine for La Pavoni — and founded the ADI (Industrial Designer Association). Among the most special works by Gio Ponti are those that he made in collaboration with master craftsmen such as the cabinetmaker Giordano Chiesa, the illustrator Piero Fornasetti and the enamellist Paolo de Poli.
5
Card table, model no. 2157, and four armchairs, model no. 212, from the "Modern by Singer" series
circa 1957
Beech, sycamore, fabric upholstery.
Table: 29 x 30 x 30 in. (73.7 x 76.2 x 76.2 cm)
Table, fully extended: 29 x 60 x 30 in. (73.7 x 152.4 x 76.2 cm)
Each armchair: 33 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 20 1/4 in. (85.7 x 57.2 x 51.4 cm)
Manufactured by Singer & Sons, New York. Underside of table with remnants of manufacturer's paper label printed & Sons. Together with a certificate of expertise from the Gio Ponti Archives.
Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000
Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist
Associate Head of Sale
bgreen@phillips.com
+1 917 207 9090
Design
New York Auction 5 June 2024
