Table lamp model “524" by Franco Albini, Italy, 1952
About the Item
- Creator:Franco Albini (Designer)
- Dimensions:Height: 18.51 in (47 cm)Width: 16.15 in (41 cm)Depth: 16.15 in (41 cm)
- Power Source:Plug-in
- Lampshade:Included
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1952
- Condition:
- Seller Location:Barcelona, ES
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2374338422462
Franco Albini
While working under the polymath Gio Ponti — arguably the most important figure in 20th-century Italian modernism — furniture designer Franco Albini nurtured a love for modern forms combined with traditional craft techniques.
Albini is widely known for working with organic materials such as rattan and cane for his chairs and other seating, but he also played a pivotal role in the Italian rationalist movement of the early 20th century, which saw architects and furniture makers applying a strict emphasis on geometry in their work. Rationalists drew on Ancient Roman architecture but rejected ornament, much in the way that Le Corbusier and celebrated Bauhaus figures such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had in their modernist furniture.
Albini received his degree in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1929, and, in 1931, he founded his practice in Milan, where he tackled workers’ housing and other reconstruction projects. A gifted urban planner, he also developed the Palazzo Bianco, Palazzo Rosso and Tesoro di San Lorenzo museums in Genoa. While Albini is revered for his Margherita chair — a Triennale Milano award winner created for Bonacina in 1951 — he also collaborated with manufacturers Poggi and Cassina in the 1940s on seating, tables and more that embodied his artistic vision. Of that mid-century work, the one piece that perhaps best captures this vision is the iconic Luisa chair.
With its cherry red upholstery and sinuous wooden legs that seem to float aboveground, the Luisa is a genuine masterpiece. It is also a testament to Albini’s perfectionism, as it endured several prototypes — including one made by Knoll in the late 1940s — and took approximately 15 years to design. Poggi launched the final version of the armchair in 1955, earning Albini the prestigious Compasso d’Oro from Italy’s Association for Industrial Design. It is produced today by Cassina. Albini named the chair for someone who likely saw the process firsthand: his personal secretary of two decades, Luisa Colombini.
Find vintage Franco Albini furniture on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Barcelona, Spain
- Return PolicyThis item cannot be returned.
- Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table Model TL-22 produced by PoggiBy Franco AlbiniLocated in Barcelona, ESFranco Albini & Franca Helg. Dining table model no. TL22. Manufactured by Poggi, Italy, 1958. Mahogany. Measurements: 180.3 cm x 104.1 cm x 73 H cm. 70.98 in x 40.98 in x 28.74 in. Literature: Giuliana Gramigna, Repertorio 1950/1980, Milan, 1985, p. 123. Franco Albini, was born in 1905 and died in 1977. He spent his childhood and part of his youth in Robbiate in Brianza, where he was born. Albini, as an adolescent moved with his family to Milan. Here he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic and graduated in 1929. He started his professional activity in the studio of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, with whom he collaborated for three years. At the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona (where Gio Ponti curated the Italian pavilion and Mies van der Rohe realized that of Germany) and in Paris where, as Franca Helg recounted, he had the opportunity to visit the studio by Le Corbusier. In those three years, the works he carried out are admittedly of the twentieth century imprint. It is the meeting with Edoardo Persico that marked a clear turning point towards rationalism and the approach to the group of editors of "Casabella". The partly ironic and partly very harsh comments of the Neapolitan critic to a series of drawings, made by Albini for the design of some office furniture, caused him a great disturbance. “I spent days of real anguish - Albini recalls - I had to answer all the questions. I also had a fever, a large and long fever. " The meted provoked Albini to openen a professional studio in via Panizza with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti. The group of architects began to deal with public housing by participating in the competition for the Baracca district in San Siro in 1932 and then building the IFACP neighborhoods: Fabio Filzi (1936/38), Gabriele D'Annunzio and Ettore Ponti (1939). During this period, Albini also worked on his first villa (Pestarini), which Giuseppe Pagano, architect and critic of the time, presented as follows: “This coherence, which the superficial rhetoric of fashionable jugglers calls intransigence, and which is instead the basis of understood between the fantasy of art and the reality of the craft, in Franco Albini, it is so rooted that it transforms theory into a moral attitude ". But it is above all in the context of the exhibitions that the Milanese master experienced his compromise between that "rigor and poetic fantasy" of which Pagano speaks, coining the elements that became a recurring theme in his . The opening in 1933 of the new Triennale headquarters in Milan, in the Palazzo dell'Arte, was an important opportunity to express the strong innovative character of rationalist thinking, a gym in which to freely experiment with new materials and new solutions, but above all a "method". "Cultivated as a communication laboratory, the art of setting up was for the rationalists of the first generation what the perspective had been for the architects of humanism: the field open to a hypothesis of space that needed profound reflections before landing the concreteness of the construction site ". Together with Giancarlo Palanti, Albini on the occasion of the V Triennale di Milano set up the steel structure house (with R. Camus, G. Mazzoleni, G. Minoletti and with the coordination of G. Pagano), for which he also designed the 'furniture. At the following Triennale of 1936, Persico dided, together with a group of young designers gathered by Pagano in the previous edition of 1933, Franco Albini took care of the preparations of the home exhibition. The setting up of Stanza per un uomo, at that same Triennale, allows us to understand the acute and ironic approach of Albini, as a man and as a designer: "Celebrating the beauty of mechanics was the imperative to which, for example, the surprising displays by Franco Albini who managed, in the subtle way of a refined and rarefied style, to sublimate their practical content in the metaphysics of daring still lifes: flying objects which marked in the void refined frames and metal intricacies the nodes of a fantastic cartography where industry finally became art free from purpose ". That same year Albini and Romano designed the exhibition of the Ancient Italian Goldsmithery: vertical uprights, simple linear rods, designed the space. A theme, of the "flagpole", seemed to be the center of the evolution of production and the creative process. The concept is reworked over time, with the technique of decomposition and recomposition typical of Albinian design: in the preparation of the Scipione Exhibition and contemporary drawings (1941) the tapered flagpoles, on which the paintings and display cases were hung, are supported by a grid of steel cables; in the Vanzetti stand (1942) they take the V-shape; in the Olivetti shop in Paris (1956) the polished mahogany uprights support the shelves for the display of typewriters and calculators. The flagpole is found, however, also in other areas. In the apartments he designed, it is used as a pivot on which the paintings can be suspended and rotated to allow different points of view, but at the same time as an element capable of dividing the spaces. The Veliero bookcase...Category
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsMahogany
- Luis Barragan '1902-1988' Ceramic Table Lamp, Mexico, 1952By Luis BarraganLocated in Barcelona, ESLUIS BARRAGÁN (1902-1988) From Casa del Pedregal (Casa Prieto López) Manufactured by Hugo X. Velázquez México, 1952 Ceramic, parchment leather Ceramic table lamp Measurements To...Category
Vintage 1950s Mexican Table Lamps
MaterialsCeramic, Leather
- Luis Barragan '1902-1988' Ceramic Table Lamp, Mexico, 1952By Luis BarraganLocated in Barcelona, ESLuis Barragan (1902-1988) Ceramic table lamp From Casa del Pedregal (Casa Prieto López) Manufactured by Hugo X. Velázquez México, 1952 Ceramic, parc...Category
Vintage 1950s Mexican Table Lamps
MaterialsCeramic, Leather
- Luis Barragan, Mirrored Glass Lamp, Mexico, 1952By Luis BarraganLocated in Barcelona, ESLuis Barragán (1902-1988) Mirrored glass lamp From Casa del Pedregal (Casa Prieto López) Manufactured by Hugo X. Velázquez México, 1952 Glas...Category
Vintage 1950s Mexican Table Lamps
MaterialsGold Leaf
- Sigve Knutson, Table Lamp Model “1”, Norway, 2019By Sigve KnutsonLocated in Barcelona, ESSigve Knutson (1991) Table lamp model “1” Manufactured by Sigve Knutson Produce in exclusive for Side Gallery Oslo, Norway, 2019 Aluminum, wood, wood dust, binder, bulb, elect...Category
2010s Norwegian Table Lamps
MaterialsAluminum
- Paavo Tynell Table Lamp Model “Umbrella” Manufactured by Taito Oy Finland, 1940By Paavo TynellLocated in Barcelona, ESPaavo Tynell Table lamp model “Umbrella” Manufactured by Taito Oy Finland, 1940 Brass From the archives of Side Gallery, Barcelona Measurements 32 cm x 41 H cm 12.5 in x 1...Category
Vintage 1940s Finnish Table Lamps
MaterialsBrass
- Franco Albini Franca Helg Table Lamp Model 524 Arteluce, 1963By Franco Albini, Franca HelgLocated in Roosendaal, Noord BrabantStunning large table lamp model 524 designed by duo Franco Albini and Franca Helg and manufactured by Arteluce, Italy 1963. This beautiful geometric table lamp is made of several lay...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
MaterialsChrome
- Franco Albini and Franca Helig Table Lamp, Model 524By Franco Albini and Franca HelgLocated in West Palm Beach, FLManufactured by Arteluce in 1963. This lamp can be used as a table lamp or hung. Arteluce decal present.Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Table Lamps
MaterialsLucite
- Franco Albini & Franca Helg Model 524 Sculptural Lucite Chrome Lamp ArteluceBy Franco Albini, Arteluce, Franco Albini and Franca HelgLocated in Troy, MIA sculptural Lucite and chrome lamp designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg for Arteluce Italy circa 1952 Sunburst design of eight acrylic pane...Category
Vintage 1950s Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
MaterialsChrome
- Pair of Model 524 Table Lamps by Franco Albini and Franca HelgBy Franco Albini and Franca HelgLocated in Los Angeles, CAPair of Model 524 Table Lamps by Franco Albini and Franca Helg. Designed and manufactured in Italy, in 1963. Striking acrylic panels have an identical molecular cutout and center aro...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
MaterialsChrome, Metal
- Model 524 Table Lamp by Franco Albini & Franca Helg for Arteluce, 1960sBy Franco Albini and Franca Helg, ArteluceLocated in Rotterdam, NLModel 524 table lamp designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg and manufactured by Arteluce. The model consists of eight rectangular transparent Perspex panels that are placed in ...Category
Vintage 1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
MaterialsMetal
- Large Vintage Italian Chrome Table Lamp by Franco AlbiniBy Sirrah, Franca Helg, Franco AlbiniLocated in London, GBA stunning and very large vintage Italian chrome table lamp by Franco Albini and Franca Helg. This was manufactured in Italy by Sirrah, it dates from the 1970’s. This is the very ra...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
MaterialsChrome