Coffee Talbe by Gae Aulenti, Model 4894
View Similar Items
Coffee Talbe by Gae Aulenti, Model 4894
About the Item
- Creator:Kartell (Author),Gae Aulenti (Designer)
- Dimensions:Height: 14.97 in (38 cm)Width: 28.35 in (72 cm)Depth: 28.35 in (72 cm)
- Style:Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1970-1979
- Condition:Minor fading.
- Seller Location:Porto, PT
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU3449119529142
Gae Aulenti
The Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti will forever be best remembered for her work with museums, in particular her 1980–86 renovation of a Beaux Arts Paris train station to create the galleries of the Musée d’Orsay. Aulenti — whose first name, short for Gaetana, is pronounced “guy” — should also be recalled for her tough intellectual spirit and for working steadily when few women found successful architectural careers in postwar Italy.
After she graduated from the Milan Polytechic in 1954, Aulenti opened an architectural office. She also joined the staff of the progressive architectural magazine Casabella, whose editorial line was that the establishment, orthodox modernism of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus, had outlived it usefulness. When their movement for fresh approaches to architecture and design received a sympathetic hearing, Aulenti found patrons — most prominently Gianni Agnelli, of Fiat, who later employed her to renovate the Palazzo Grassi in Venice for use as an arts exhibition space.
Commissions for showrooms and other corporate spaces brought Aulenti to furniture design. She felt that furniture should never dominate a room. Her chairs and sofas — low-slung, with rounded enameled metal frames and ample seats — and tables, particularly her 1972 marble Jumbo coffee table for Knoll, project solidity and sturdiness. In lighting design, however, Aulenti is bravura. Each work has a marvelous sculptural presence. Pieces such as her Pipistrello table lamp and Quadrifoglio pendant are a perfect marriage of organically shaped glass and high-tech fixtures. Others have a futuristic elegance — and some even have a touch of personality. Aulenti’s Pileino and La Ruspa table lamps each look almost like little robots. Her lighting pieces are an artful grace note in the career of a woman who believed in strength.
Kartell
The Italian design giant Kartell transformed plastic from the stuff of humble household goods into a staple of luxury design in the 1960s. Founded in Milan by Italian chemical engineer Giulio Castelli (1920–2006) and his wife Anna Ferrieri (1918–2006), Kartell began as an industrial design firm, producing useful items like ski racks for automobiles and laboratory equipment designed to replace breakable glass with sturdy plastic. Even as companies like Olivetti and Vespa were making Italian design popular in the 1950s, typewriters and scooters were relatively costly, and Castelli and Ferrieri wanted to provide Italian consumers with affordable, stylish goods.
They launched a housewares division of Kartell in 1953, making lighting fixtures and kitchen tools and accessories from colorful molded plastic. Consumers in the postwar era were initially skeptical of plastic goods, but their affordability and infinite range of styles and hues eventually won devotees. Tupperware parties in the United States made plastic storage containers ubiquitous in postwar homes, and Kartell’s ingenious designs for juicers, dustpans, and dish racks conquered Europe. Kartell designer Gino Colombini was responsible for many of these early products, and his design for the KS 1146 Bucket won the Compasso d’Oro prize in 1955.
Buoyed by its success in the home goods market, Kartell introduced its Habitat division in 1963. Designers Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper created the K1340 (later called the K 4999) children’s chair that year, and families enjoyed their bright colors and light weight, which made them easy for kids to pick up and move. In 1965, Joe Colombo (1924–78) created one of Kartell’s few pieces of non-plastic furniture, the 4801 chair, which sits low to the ground and comprised of just three curved pieces of plywood. (In 2012, Kartell reissued the chair in plastic.) Colombo followed up on the success of the 4801 with the iconic 4867 Universal Chair in 1967, which, like Verner Panton’s S chair, is made from a single piece of plastic. The colorful, stackable injection-molded chair was an instant classic. That same year, Kartell introduced Colombo’s KD27 table lamp. Ferrierei’s cylindrical 4966 Componibili storage module debuted in 1969.
Kartell achieved international recognition for its innovative work in 1972, when a landmark exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz called “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” opened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That show introduced American audiences to the work of designers such as Gaetano Pesce; Ettore Sottsass, founder of the Memphis Group; and the firms Archizoom and Superstudio (both firms were among Italy's Radical design groups) — all of whom were using wit, humor and unorthodox materials to create a bracingly original interior aesthetic.
Castelli and Ferrieri sold Kartell to Claudio Luti, their son-in-law, in 1988, and since then, Luti has expanded the company’s roster of designers.
Kartell produced Ron Arad’s Bookworm wall shelf in 1994, and Philippe Starck’s La Marie chair in 1998. More recently, Kartell has collaborated with the Japanese collective Nendo, Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola and glass designer Tokujin Yoshioka, among many others. Kartell classics can be found in museums around the world, including MoMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 1999, Claudio Luti established the Museo Kartell to tell the company’s story, through key objects from its innovative and colorful history.
Find vintage Kartell tables, seating, table lamps and other furniture on 1stDibs.
- Gae Aulenti for Knoll Made of Black Marble Italian Square Coffee Table "Jumbo"By Gae Aulenti, KnollLocated in Ibiza, SpainJumbo coffee table designed by Gae Aulenti (Italy, 1927-1972) for Knoll. Made in Marquina marble. Gae Aulenti (1927-2012) was one of the few Italian women to rise to prominence in a...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Center Tables
MaterialsMarble
- Tavolino da caffè Gae Aulenti Jumbo per Knoll in marmo Nero MarquinaBy Knoll, Gae AulentiLocated in Milano, MIJumbo firmato da Gae Aulenti per Knoll è il tavolino completamente in marmo con coppia di gambe ad ogni angolo. I marmi sono della migliore qualità, selezionati per eliminare i difet...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Mid-Century Modern Center Tables
MaterialsMarble
- Glass Coffee Table After Gae AulentiBy Gae AulentiLocated in Oakland, CAA wild and playful coffee table with large glass wheels after Gae Aulenti, produced in the late 90s to early 2000s. This unusual design is likened to her "Tour" and "Tavolo Con Ruote...Category
1990s Italian Post-Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
MaterialsChrome
- “Jumbo” Coffee Table by Gae Aulenti for Knoll, 1960sBy Knoll, Gae AulentiLocated in Renens, CHGae Aulenti, an Italian architect active during the post-war period has designed buildings, interiors, furniture and lamps during her career, many of them well-known such as the Musé...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
MaterialsMarble
- Jumbo Table by Gae AulentiBy Gae AulentiLocated in Los Angeles, CACarrara marble "Jumbo" table by Gae Aulenti for Knoll International. Made in Italy circa 1960s.Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Coffee and Cocktail Tables
MaterialsCarrara Marble
$15,000 - Coffee Table by Gae Aulenti for Fontana Arte, 1980sBy Gae AulentiLocated in Brussels, BECoffee Table by Gae Aulenti for Fontana Arte, 1980sCategory
Vintage 1980s Italian Coffee and Cocktail Tables
MaterialsGlass