Atelier International Limited & Cassina Trade Catalogue Binder, 1988

Without question the greatest architect the United States has ever produced, Frank Lloyd Wright and his philosophy of “organic architecture” — of buildings that exist in harmony with their natural surroundings — had a profound influence on the shape of modern life.

Wright gave us some of the most elegant and iconic buildings in America: residences such as Fallingwater, in rural Pennsylvania, the Robie House in Chicago, and Taliesin, Wright’s own home; and masterful institutional structures that include the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Whenever possible, Wright designed the furniture for his projects, to ensure an affinity between a building’s exterior and interior.

Wright’s wooden chairs and tables for his “Prairie Houses” of the early 1900s have sleek, attenuated forms, influenced by both the simplicity of traditional Japanese design and the work of Gustav Stickley and other designers of the Arts and Crafts movement.

For Taliesin and several residential projects, Wright designed severely geometric chairs that are marvels of reductivist design. He revisited many of these forms in the 1950s in furniture licensed to the North Carolina firm Henredon, adding a decorative frieze-like element to the edges of tables and stools. Owing to a cross-licensing agreement between Henredon and Heritage at the time, Wright's lines of the era are usually labeled Heritage-Henredon.

The works on 1stDibs also show how happily Wright embraced new forms and materials. His desks and chairs for Johnson Wax have a streamlined look and use tubular steel to the same effect as designer Warren McArthur, who collaborated with Wright in the interiors of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. For the Price Tower (1956) in Oklahoma, Wright designed angular wooden desks as well as upholstered pedestal chairs made of chromed steel — audacious furniture for his tallest completed building project.

The beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture designs is that while many of us wish we could live in one of his houses, his vintage sofas, storage cabinets and armchairs connect us directly to his architecture, and to the history he made.

As one of the founding fathers of modern Italian design, prolific architect and industrial designer Ludovico Magistretti (known by his nickname Vico) was guided by his philosophy, “There is no excuse for bad design.” His architectural projects are widely revered, and an ingenious meld of form and function can be found in his stylish and deceptively simple table lamps, sofas, armchairs and other mid-century furnishings.

Born in Milan, Magistretti followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather (both architects) to study architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan. At the outbreak of World War II, he fled to Switzerland, and it was there he met his role model and mentor, renowned humanist architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Magistretti was inspired by Rogers’s vision to revive postwar Italy, and they collaborated on several reconstruction projects. Among Magistretti’s first architectural designs is a “poetic” round church, which he created for the QT8, an experimental Milanese neighborhood.

When Magistretti returned to Milan in 1945, he worked at his father’s architectural firm. It wasn’t until the early 1950s that he expanded his talents into design while working with furniture artisans.

In the 1960s, Magistretti began his 30-year working relationship with famed entrepreneur Cesare Cassina of the Cassina furniture manufacturing company. In their design approach, the two men shared a vision of the relationship between modernity and tradition and enjoyed a close bond (Magistretti designed Cassina’s luxurious villa in 1965). However, their friendship was not without contention.

Legend has it that upon seeing the prototype for Magistretti’s Maralunga sofa, Cassina hated it so much that he punched it, breaking the back of the sofa, which crumpled into itself.

“Right, great, it looks perfect to me like that,” an unfazed Magistretti allegedly responded, and the Maralunga’s slumped, adjustable-height backrest was born. Incidentally, the Maralunga sofa won Italy’s Compasso d’Oro award as did his Eclisse lamp for Artemide and his Atollo lamp for Oluce.

Magistretti died in 2006, but his designs live on in galleries, museums and private residences and offices around the world.

Find a range of vintage Vico Magistretti furniture and lighting on 1stDibs.