Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Lino Sabattini was the preeminent figure in modern Italian silver and metalware design. His expansive and diverse body of work is marked by its strength and boldness, whether in dynamic forms that suggest the thrust and power of Italian Futurist art and design or light and curvaceous biomorphic serveware and decorative objects.
Sabattini was largely self-taught as a designer. Born in the northern Italian town of Correggio, he learned metalsmithing techniques while working in the studio of a maker of brass tableware. He also served as an apprentice of sorts to the expatriate German ceramist Roland Hettner, who taught Sabattini about fluidity of form and showed him how shapes derive from the behavior of materials.
At age 30, Sabattini opened a studio in Milan, and his work quickly came to the attention of Gio Ponti, who decided to publish it in Domus, the Italian design legend's influential design and architecture magazine. Ponti also arranged for Sabattini’s creations to be included in a 1956 exhibition of contemporary Italian design in Paris. The principals of Christofle, the revered French silverware maker, were so impressed that they hired the young designer as the firm’s artistic director, a post he held until 1963. Sabattini, who would also go on to design ceramic wares for Rosenthal, returned home to open Argenteria Sabattini in Bregnano, a company still in business today.
A designer with a questing curiosity and ever-evolving aesthetic sensibility, Sabattini couldn’t be pinned down to one particular style. His best-known work, the Como coffee and tea service of 1956, has an elegant, attenuated and energetic form; his Stairs coffee and tea service (1971), meanwhile, is a clever group of simple columnar shapes in stepped heights, which nest together in a compact arrangement. Other Sabattini pieces have dramatic angles, or sweeping, wing-like flourishes, or consist of perforated ovoids somehow reminiscent of sculptures by Brancusi. In any style, Sabattini produced objects of singular fascination.
Find a range of vintage Lino Sabattini vases and other decorative objects on 1stDibs.
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Metal, Silver Plate
1960s French Space Age Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Silver Plate, Brass
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Onyx
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Onyx
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Brass, Chrome
1960s Austrian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Wood
Mid-20th Century Italian Moorish Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Fruitwood
1960s Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Metal
1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Wood
Early 20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Crystal, Metal
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Alabaster
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Silver
1960s Italian Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Silver Plate
1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Lino Sabattini Decorative Boxes
Metal, Silver Plate
