Azucena Chinotto

Vintage Azucena furniture is elegant and inviting — the esteemed mid-century Milanese manufacturer’s wall lights, armchairs and side tables, which are marked by simple symmetry and thoughtfully contrasting materials, can likely be found in the living rooms of design lovers all over Italy.

Azucena was founded in 1947 by three leading figures of 20th-century Italian architecture: Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella and Corrado Corradi Dell’Acqua. The trio initially established Azucena in order to furnish the interiors of buildings they’d designed but found a robust business opportunity in manufacturing individual pieces from those collections for postwar consumers. And as the company founders borrowed the brand name from a conniving character in the Giuseppe Verd opera Il Trovatore, it is appropriate, then, that the furniture for which Azucena is known is practical but exudes a hint of playfulness.

The best of Italian modernism combines cheekiness and bold functionality with provocative and thoughtful design, and Azucena is deeply rooted in that tradition. While its brass-and-walnut mid-century-modern-era dining tables and stackable coffee tables — created by the likes of Dell’Acqua and Vico Magistretti — are exceptionally unobtrusive in small spaces and framed in clean lines, Dominioni designed chunky, enveloping armchairs during the 1970s upholstered in striking red fabric.

Among Azucena's most successful and iconic designs is also Dominioni's most famous piece of furniture: the minimalist Catalina chair. After it debuted at the Milan Triennial in 1957, the Catalina chair, with its generously curving enameled steel frame and plush leather cushion, became an instant sensation. Dominioni’s other enduring designs for Azucena include the Monachella lamp, the ABCD armchair and the versatile Cilindro ottoman.

Italian furniture manufacturer B&B Italia acquired Azucena in 2018 and has reissued a number of designs from the legendary brand’s portfolio, such as the Imbuto lamp, the Catalina armchair and the Cavalletto table.

On 1stDibs, find vintage Azucena lighting, tables, seating and more.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

Armchairs have run the gamut from prestige to ease and everything in between, and everyone has an antique or vintage armchair that they love.

Long before industrial mass production democratized seating, armchairs conveyed status and power.

In ancient Egypt, the commoners took stools, while in early Greece, ceremonial chairs of carved marble were designated for nobility. But the high-backed early thrones of yore, elevated and ornate, were merely grandiose iterations of today’s armchairs.

Modern-day armchairs, built with functionality and comfort in mind, are now central to tasks throughout your home. Formal dining armchairs support your guests at a table for a cheery feast, a good drafting chair with a deep seat is parked in front of an easel where you create art and, elsewhere, an ergonomic wonder of sorts positions you at the desk for your 9 to 5.

When placed under just the right lamp where you can lounge comfortably, both elbows resting on the padded supports on each side of you, an upholstered armchair — or a rattan armchair for your light-suffused sunroom — can be the sanctuary where you’ll read for hours.

If you’re in the mood for company, your velvet chesterfield armchair is a place to relax and be part of the conversation that swirls around you. Maybe the dialogue is about the beloved Papa Bear chair, a mid-century modern masterpiece from Danish carpenter and furniture maker Hans Wegner, and the wingback’s strong association with the concept of cozying up by the fireplace, which we can trace back to its origins in 1600s-era England, when the seat’s distinctive arm protrusions protected the sitter from the heat of the period’s large fireplaces.

If the fireside armchair chat involves spirited comparisons, your companions will likely probe the merits of antique and vintage armchairs such as Queen Anne armchairs, Victorian armchairs or even Louis XVI armchairs, as well as the pros and cons of restoration versus conservation.

Everyone seems to have a favorite armchair and most people will be all too willing to talk about their beloved design. Whether that’s the unique Favela chair by Brazilian sibling furniture designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, who repurposed everyday objects to provocative effect; or Marcel Breuer’s futuristic tubular metal Wassily lounge chair; the functionality-first LC series from Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret; or the Eames lounge chair of the mid-1950s created by Charles and Ray Eames, there is an iconic armchair for everyone and every purpose. Find yours on 1stDibs right now.