Endless Enigma

Italian designer Jacopo Foggini creates playful modern furniture — he uses industrial materials in novel and exciting ways that frequently break with the constraints of conventional design. His chandeliers, vases and sculptural pieces have an ethereal quality, and each new work merges art and functionalism in rich and interesting ways.

Foggini was born in Turin in 1966. As a young man in the 1990s, he joined the family business in the industrial sector. Ever inventive, he modified a piece of machinery to heat a polymer called methacrylate and make a filament that could be molded with his hands. Foggini used the filament to produce large installations of the colorful spiraling material.

In 1997, Foggini held his first exhibition in the Milan boutique of friend and fashion designer Romeo Gigli. His next major career highlight came in 2006 when he was asked to design the Lampadario da Teatro for the Turin Winter Olympic Games. The chandelier illuminated the stage during a performance by opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. In 2011, he also designed a six-meter diameter matryoshka doll for Moscow Design Week.

One of the most important relationships over the course of Foggini's career has been with furniture manufacturer Edra. Foggini and Edra routinely collaborate on striking tables and chairs, among them the sinuous Capriccio table and the sculptural swivel Ester chair.

Foggini has exhibited at more than 60 venues and galleries all over the world and he has shown his work numerous times at Milan Design Week. He has also designed installations at prestigious hotels, restaurants, theaters and showrooms. Just some of his many projects include the Nhow Hotel in Milan, the Riad Enija Hotel in Marrakech, the Milan Bentley Showroom, the Etro showroom in Istanbul and Vapiano restaurants.

In 2021, Foggini launched the new A’mare collection with Edra at Milan Design Week. A collection of outdoor furniture that sparkles like the surface of the sea, A’mare’s transparent polycarbonate tables and chairs bring color and style out into any garden area or patio space.

On 1stDibs, find Jacopo Foggini lighting, decorative objects, wall decorations 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.

Abstract sculpture has evolved over time with artists making a variety of striking statements in stone, bronze, ceramic and other materials. In the collection of abstract sculptures on 1stDibs, you are sure to find a piece that is perfect for your space.

When exploring how to arrange furniture and decor, consider color, texture and what kind of energy it should evoke. Abstract sculpture can elevate any home through its many decorative possibilities.

Auguste Rodin is often called the father of modern sculpture for his pioneering naturalistic forms and figures that vividly express emotion. His work in the 19th and early 20th centuries broke with artistic conventions and inspired modernism, leading to a new period of avant-garde abstraction.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were among the first artists to push abstract sculpture into the mainstream. They helped define the Cubism movement, which focused on deconstructing the world abstractly. Other 20th-century artistic movements, including Italian Futurism, Dadaism, Neo-Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, all contributed to the advancement of abstract sculpture. Italian Futurism, for example, celebrated movement, dynamics and technology in abstract sculpture. These movements continue to inform abstract sculpture today.

With abstract art — sculpture, painting or a grouping of prints — a work can complement a living room, dining room or other space, or it can act as a bold focal point.

Browse a range of modern abstract sculptures, postmodern abstract sculptures and other sculptures on 1stDibs.