Mid-Century Modern Gio Ponti Desk for Dassi, Italy, 1960s

An architect, furniture and industrial designer and editor, Gio Ponti was arguably the most influential figure in 20th-century Italian modernism.

Ponti designed thousands of furnishings and products — from cabinets, mirrors and chairs to ceramics and coffeemakers — and his buildings, including the brawny Pirelli Tower (1956) in his native Milan, and the castle-like Denver Art Museum (1971), were erected in 14 countries. Through Domus, the magazine he founded in 1928, Ponti brought attention to virtually every significant movement and creator in the spheres of modern art and design.

The questing intelligence Ponti brought to Domus is reflected in his work: as protean as he was prolific, Ponti’s style can’t be pegged to a specific genre.

In the 1920s, as artistic director for the Tuscan porcelain maker Richard Ginori, he fused old and new; his ceramic forms were modern, but decorated with motifs from Roman antiquity. In pre-war Italy, modernist design was encouraged, and after the conflict, Ponti — along with designers such as Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Marco Zanuso — found a receptive audience for their novel, idiosyncratic work. Ponti’s typical furniture forms from the period, such as the wedge-shaped Distex chair, are simple, gently angular, and colorful; equally elegant and functional. In the 1960s and ’70s, Ponti’s style evolved again as he explored biomorphic shapes, and embraced the expressive, experimental designs of Ettore Sottsass Jr., Joe Colombo and others.

Ponti's signature furniture piece — the one by which he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Germany’s Vitra Design Museum and elsewhere — is the sleek Superleggera chair, produced by Cassina starting in 1957. (The name translates as “superlightweight” — advertisements featured a model lifting it with one finger.)

Ponti had a playful side, best shown in a collaboration he began in the late 1940s with the graphic artist Piero Fornasetti. Ponti furnishings were decorated with bright finishes and Fornasetti's whimsical lithographic transfer prints of things such as butterflies, birds or flowers; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts possesses a 1950 secretary from their Architetturra series, which feature case pieces covered in images of building interiors and facades. The grandest project Ponti and Fornasetti undertook, however, lies on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean: the interiors of the luxury liner Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956.

Widely praised retrospectives at the Queens Museum of Art in 2001 and at the Design Museum London in 2002 sparked a renewed interest in Ponti among modern design aficionados. (Marco Romanelli’s monograph, which was written for the London show, offers a fine overview of Ponti’s work.) Today, a wide array of Ponti’s designs are snapped up by savvy collectors who want to give their homes a touch of Italian panache and effortless chic.

Find a range of vintage Gio Ponti desks, dining chairs, coffee tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Collectors of vintage mid-century modern furniture will find that the work of Italian designer Vittorio Dassi and Dassi Mobili Moderni is elegant and sculptural, brimming with all of the clean, angular lines and pleasing symmetry associated with the best of the era’s offerings.

While Dassi's name is less known to enthusiasts of the period’s furniture than the likes of Ico and Luisa Parisi, Franco Albini and other leading lights of mid-20th century Italian design, his case pieces, tables and seating will prove no less worthy of hunting down at today's flea markets and online marketplaces.

Wood was Dassi's preferred material — he favored rosewood, mahogany, walnut and other species for his covetable desks and wall units, which frequently featured decorative flourishes such as glass inlays, while a sideboard or buffet’s fronts might boast hand-carved geometric cutouts in lieu of brass door handles. 

While little is known about Dassi's early life, it is believed that his career in furniture design began in 1940 at his family's company Dassi Mobili Moderni, in Lissone, Italy. Shortly thereafter, he took over managing the company from his father.

While Dassi produced dry bars and other case pieces during the 1950s that featured the motifs and ornament that are today attributed to the Art Deco movement, he created sumptuous mahogany nightstands topped with black glass and minimalist teak coffee tables that better represented the forward-looking spirit of mid-century modernism. His wall units of the era for Mobili Cantù are works of art — crafted in walnut and featuring birch veneers and high-gloss lacquer finishes as well as a single door front decorated with an abstract painting or otherwise provocative illustration, these structures would undoubtedly prove quite impressive to the likes of Poul Cadovius and George Nelson.

Dassi often collaborated with Italian architect, editor and furniture designer Gio Ponti. Ponti designed thousands of furnishings and products — from cabinets, mirrors and chairs to ceramics and coffeemakers — and his buildings, including the brawny Pirelli Tower (1956) in his native Milan, and the castle-like Denver Art Museum (1971), were erected in 14 countries. A collaboration between Dassi and Ponti of note is the pair’s work on the Hotel Royal in Naples — Ponti was commissioned to design the hotel and he partnered with Dassi to design the hotel's furnishings. 

Today, Dassi Mobili Moderni S.R.L. is still in operation in Lissone.

Find vintage Dassi furniture by Fratelli Turri, Edmondo Palutari and other designers on 1stDibs.