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Franco Albini Furniture

Italian, 1905-1977

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.

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Creator: Franco Albini
Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, 1958, Set of 2
Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, 1958, Set of 2

Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, 1958, Set of 2

By Poggi, Franco Albini

Located in Lonigo, Veneto

Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, wood, Italy, 1958, set of 2 Designed in 1958, the “T22” desks are among the rarest and most refined creations by Franco Albini for Poggi. Define...

Category

1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Wood

Mid-Century Modern Red Armchair Fiorenza by Franco Albini for Arflex, Italy
Mid-Century Modern Red Armchair Fiorenza by Franco Albini for Arflex, Italy

Mid-Century Modern Red Armchair Fiorenza by Franco Albini for Arflex, Italy

By Franco Albini

Located in Brussels, BE

Mid-Century Modern Armchair Fiorenza by Franco Albini for Arflex, Italy.

Category

1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Fabric, Wood

1950’s Bamboo Coat Stand by Franco Albini
1950’s Bamboo Coat Stand by Franco Albini

1950’s Bamboo Coat Stand by Franco Albini

By Franco Albini

Located in London, Lambeth

Born near Milan in 1905, Franco Albini was an Italian architect, urban planner, and furniture designer active between the 1930s and the 1960s. He studied architecture at Milan’s famo...

Category

Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Bamboo

Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table  Model TL-22 produced by Poggi
Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table  Model TL-22 produced by Poggi

Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table Model TL-22 produced by Poggi

By Franco Albini

Located in Barcelona, ES

Franco 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 Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Mahogany

Mid-Century Modern Bamboo Coat Hook by Franco Albini, Italy 1950s
Mid-Century Modern Bamboo Coat Hook by Franco Albini, Italy 1950s

Mid-Century Modern Bamboo Coat Hook by Franco Albini, Italy 1950s

By Franco Albini

Located in Beograd, RS

In this listing you will find a Mid-Century Modern oval vintage rattan and bamboo wall coat hook designed by a reknown Italian designer Franco Albini (attr). The rattan hooks...

Category

1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Bamboo

Table lamp model “524" by Franco Albini, Italy, 1952
Table lamp model “524" by Franco Albini, Italy, 1952

Table lamp model “524" by Franco Albini, Italy, 1952

By Franco Albini

Located in Barcelona, ES

Table lamp model “524” Made in collaboration with Franca Helg Manufactured by Arteluce Italy, 1952 Openwork Perspex in a chrome frame Measurements 41 Ø cm x 47h cm. 16,14 Ø in x 18,5...

Category

1950s Italian Vintage Franco Albini Furniture

Materials

Chrome

Franco Albini furniture for sale on 1stDibs.

Franco Albini furniture are available for sale on 1stDibs. These distinctive items are frequently made of wood and are designed with extraordinary care. There are many options to choose from in our collection of Franco Albini furniture, although brown editions of this piece are particularly popular. We have 173 vintage editions of these items in-stock, while there is 21 modern edition to choose from as well. Many of the original furniture by Franco Albini were created in the mid-century modern style in europe during the 20th century. If you’re looking for additional options, many customers also consider furniture by Marco Zanuso, Paolo Buffa, and Arflex. Prices for Franco Albini furniture can differ depending upon size, time period and other attributes — on 1stDibs, these items begin at $209 and can go as high as $58,000, while a piece like these, on average, fetch $5,981.
Questions About Franco Albini Furniture
  • 1stDibs ExpertFebruary 13, 2024
    Rattan is one of the materials used to make wicker furniture and other furnishings. It comes from a plant that grows in hot, tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Australia. The quick-growing plant has a bamboo-like inner material that gets removed and fashioned into cane. Stalks of rattan (whose name derives from the Malay “rota”) are dense, steamable and bendable, which is why it lends itself to curvaceous designs and infinite creative uses in a way bamboo does not. Pieces of rattan furniture were welcomed indoors in the mid-20th century, and over time the medium has been put to use by giants of modernism such as Josef Hoffmann, Thonet, Jean-Michel Frank and Donald Deskey. Shop a wide variety of rattan furniture on 1stDibs.