Meret Oppenheim Traccia Side Table in Wood Gold Leaf and Bronze by Gavina 1980s

Round table model T72 in wood, black lacquered metal and brass details, designed by Ettore Sottsass and produced by Poltronova in the late 1950s. The T72 table has a strong base mad...

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...

A round coffee table in walnut wood, colored ground crystal on top, and brass legs. Designed by Osvaldo Borsani and produced by Atelier Borsani, Varedo, in the 1960s. This mid-centur...

Occasional table with structure in wood with a removable center part in sheet metal and a rectangular shaped table top, designe by Gio Ponti and produced by Figli di Amedeo Cassina...

This table is a surrealist piece of furniture made while International Style was popular. Meret Oppenheim was a German-born Swiss artist and designer best known for her teacup lined ...

Original ’Traccia’ table in very good condition. Designed by Meret Oppenheim Produced by Studio Simon’s Collezione Ultramobili, Milan, 1972 The tabletop is covered in gold leaf and has bird tracks embossed in the surface. The top rests on two brass feet in the form of bird legs. The original table was exhibited by the Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim in 1939 for the Parisian gallery René Drouin...

An original and authentic Meret Oppenheim Traccia table. This table manufactured by Gavina, Italy as part of the initial production in th...

This table is a surrealist piece of furniture made while International Style was popular. Meret Oppenheim was a German-born Swiss artist and designer best known for her teacup lined ...