Zanotta Edizioni Alchera Chest in Elm-Wood Frame by Joe Tilson

Joe Tilson (1928 – Present) Tilson was born on 24th August, 1928 in London, England. Tilson served in the Royal Air Force from 1946 – 49, after which he studied at St Martin’s School of Art (1949-1952) and the Royal College of Art (1952 – 1955). He won the Rome Prize for graduation, taking him to Italy from 1955 - 1957. From 1958 – 1963, Tilson taught at St Martin’s School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and the School of Visual Arts, New York. During the 1960s, Tilson’s artistic career took off as he attracted attention for his unique wooden reliefs and constructions, prints and paintings in the emerging British Pop Art style. He held his first solo exhibition at the Marlborough Galley, London in 1962. In 1977, Tilson joined the Waddington Galleries, exhibited at the Alan Cristea Gallery and the Giò Marconi Galleries in Milan. At the Venice Biennale in 1964, Tilson’s work began to gain international popularity, earning him a retrospective at the Boyman’s Museum, Rotterdam later that year. Growing anti-consumerist feeling in the 1970s pushed Tilson to begin to incorporate a wider variety of materials in his work, including stone, straw and rope to create a timeless feel to his work. This body of work was called Alchera, and was a huge success. Tilson was made a Royal Academician in 2002 which was celebrated with a retrospective exhibition in the same year at the Royal Academy entitled Joe Tilson: Pop to Present. Tilson is collected internationally, including at the Arts Council England, London; the British Library, London; Christchurch College, Oxford; the Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest; the Tate, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; The Royal Collection; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven

Entrepreneur Aurelio Zanotta founded Zanotta in 1954 in Nova Milanese, Italy. Originally called Zanotta Poltrona, it specialized in traditional furniture. By the early 1960s, however, Zanotta had established a reputation for edgy mid-century modern design. Today’s vintage furniture collectors know the brand well for its innovative and wholly sculptural chairs, coffee tables and more.

One of Zanotta’s earliest successes was the Mezzadro stool — better known as the Tractor stool — designed by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and his brother Achille in the late 1950s. In 1965, Zanotta was among the first furniture companies to work with expanded polyurethane foam and frameless construction, such as for the Throw-Away sofas and armchairs designed by Willie Landels. Another popular design was the Blow chair — designed by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi and Carla Scolari — viewed by many as a physical expression of late '60s carefree culture.

In 1969, amid the provocative movement we now call Italian Radical Design, Zanotta’s Sacco chair garnered major attention. The boundary-pushing beanbag chair was the brainchild of designers Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro who presented it to Aurelio Zanotta as a transparent vinyl sack loosely filled with small polystyrene balls. He suggested its signature brightly colored leather.

The Sacco chair won the 1970 ADI Design Museum’s Compasso d’Oro award. In 1972, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included it in the landmark exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” curated by designer Emilio Ambasz. In 2020, it received a Compasso d’Oro ADI Lifetime Achievement Award for 50 years of enduring popularity. It is now in museum collections around the world including the Triennale Design Museum of Milan, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

After Aurelio Zanotta died in 1991, the company remained in his family and has been run by his three children since 2002. Zanotta continues to set the bar high for furniture design with trend-setting pieces.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Zanotta seating, tables and other furniture.