While it might remind you of one of those ubiquitous backyard chimineas, or their Jetsons-era counterpart, the conical Malm fireplace, Giovanni Battista Mitri’s 1965 majolica chimney is something else entirely: a masterful merging of Paleolithic imagery and contemporary craft that pulsates with primal life.
One of perhaps 10 made by the Italian ceramist, the example being offered on 1stDibs by mid-century design purveyor Modernab was commissioned for the living room of the Palazzo Bollani in Venice, near where Modernab is based. A private home at the time, the palazzo was later converted into an exhibition and conference center.
Mitri (born in 1915 and known to friends as Giobatta) appears to have made various versions of the chimney after opening his ceramics studio in Venice in the 1940s — around the time that a vast trove of cave paintings was discovered in Lascaux, France. Renderings of animals similar to those at Lascaux cavort above the yawning firebox of the Modernab piece, which was hand built in terracotta and finished in majolica’s characteristic tin-enamel glaze.
The ceramist’s pairing of prehistoric art and mid-century design still feels radical while at the same time utterly logical. What could be more appropriate for cave dwellers than a vessel designed to hold fire? And despite its sinuous form, the chimney is anything but slick — its sensuous, mottled surface betrays the mark of the artisan’s hand. Even the iron base that cradles the chimney manages to feel modern and primitive at the same time.
“It’s a real shout from the earth,” observes Modernab founder Amedeo Bruscagnin. “When I look at it, I feel something that reconnects me to the earth, to wide open spaces and to nature.”
Bruscagnin likens the form to that of a pregnant woman, one with a literal “fire in her belly.” Although he concedes that a buyer could still use the piece as a fireplace, he recommends “installing it as a work of art, as it was originally conceived — as something that brings great personality and distinctive craftsmanship to a room.”
Mitri’s reputation never extended much beyond Venice. There’s little written about him, and the few examples of his work that can be found on the market are generally his exuberant animal sculptures and some of the monumental vessels he made in the decades prior to his death, in 2000.
“This guy was kind of an underdog, in that he’s not as famous as other artists might be. He didn’t produce a lot of pieces,” says Bruscagnin, who believes that Mitri used the Palazzo Bollani commission to reflect on his career up to that point.
“It’s like a celebration of life — and his artistic life,” the dealer says.
