Franco Albini for Poggi Dining Table 'TL2' in Walnut

Table model TL2, known as "Cavalletto," designed by Franco Albini in 1950 for Poggi. Wooden frame with rectangular top resting on two trestle bases joined by a reinforcing bar. The p...

A rare mahogany version of the Cavaletto or TL2 table designed by the great neo-rationalist designer, Franco Albini. Designed in 1950 for manufacturers Poggi...

Italian Mid-Century Modern design dining table designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg and produced by Poggi Pavia from 1958 with veneered walnut top with elliptical shaped longer ...

Iconic table designed by the great Italian maestro Franco Albini in the 50s. The model is TL2 better known as "Cavalletto" (in english "Trestle") since it reminds of lightness and wi...

Model TL30 marble table designed by Franco Albini for Poggi, Pavia. Made in Italy circa 1950s. Reference: G. Gramigna, "Repertorio del design italiano 1950-2000", p. 53, Allemandi, ...

The TL 22 Cavalletto table, designed by Franco Albini for Poggi Pavia in 1955, is a stunning example of midcentury Italian design. Featuring a minimalist, elegant structure, the tabl...

TL30 table with a round top in wood and a base in black lacquered metal, designed by Franco Albini and produced by Poggi in the 1950s. After spending his childhood and part of his youth in Robbiate in Brianza, where he was born in 1905, Franco Albini moved with his family to Milan. Here he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic and graduated in 1929. He starts his professional activity in the studio of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, with whom he collaborates for three years. He probably had his first international contacts here In those three years, the works carried out are admittedly of a twentieth-century imprint. It was the meeting with Edoardo Persico that marked a clear turning point towards rationalism and the rapprochement with the group of editors of “Casabella”. The new phase that that meeting provoked starts with the opening of the first professional studio in via Panizza with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti. The group of architects began to deal with public housing by participating in the competition for the Baracca neighborhood in San Siro in 1932 and then creating the Ifacp neighborhoods: Fabio Filzi (1936/38), Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ettore Ponti (1939). Also in those years Albini worked on his first villa Pestarini. But it is above all in the context of the exhibitions that the Milanese master experiments his compromise between that “rigor and poetic fantasy” coining the elements that will be a recurring theme in all the declinations of his work – architecture, interiors, design pieces . The opening in 1933 of the new headquarters of the Triennale in Milan, in the Palazzo dell’Arte, becomes an important opportunity to express the strong innovative character of rationalist thought, a gym in which to freely experiment with new materials and new solutions, but above all a “method”. Together with Giancarlo Palanti, Albini on the occasion of the V Triennale di Milano sets up the steel structure house, for which he also designs the ‘furniture. At the subsequent Triennale of 1936, marked by the untimely death of Persico, together with a group of young designers gathered by Pagano in the previous edition of 1933, Franco Albini takes care of the preparation of the exhibition of the house, in which the furniture of three types of accommodation. The staging of Stanza per un uomo, at that same Triennale, allows us to understand the acute and ironic approach that is part of Albini, as a man and as a designer: the theme addressed is that of the existenzminimum and the reference of the project is to the fascist myth of the athletic and sporty man, but it is also a way to reflect on low-cost housing, the reduction of surfaces to a minimum and respect for the way of living. In that same year Albini and Romano designed the Ancient Italian Goldsmith’s Exhibition: vertical uprights, simple linear rods, design the space. A theme, that of the “flagpole”, which seems to be the center of the evolution of his production and creative process. The concept is reworked over time, with the technique of decomposition and recomposition typical of Albinian planning: in the setting up of the Scipio Exhibition and of contemporary drawings (1941) the tapered flagpoles, on which the paintings and display cases are hung, are supported by a grid of steel cables; in the Vanzetti stand (1942) they take on the V shape; in the Olivetti store in Paris (1956) the uprights in polished mahogany support the shelves for displaying typewriters and calculators. The reflection on this theme arises from the desire to interpret the architectural space, to read it through the use of a grid, to introduce the third dimension, the vertical one, while maintaining a sense of lightness and transparency. The flagpole is found, however, also in areas other than the exhibition ones. In the apartments he designed, it is used as a pivot on which the paintings can be suspended and rotated to allow different points of view, but at the same time as an element capable of dividing spaces. The Veliero bookcase...

Cavalletto or TL2 dining or working table designed in 1950 by italian architect Franco Albini, old Poggi edition. Wood construction with beveled edges tabletop and crossed legs with ...

Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi, 1950s

Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi, 1950s.