GX1993.199.1-13

Unità di misura: UNR; Misure mancanti: MNR

legno di acero verniciatura

In 1936-1937, Milanese architect Piero Bottoni designed the house in Livorno for Umberto Bedarida, an entrepreneur and scholar of Jewish culture, and his wife Laura Franco, a painter and sculptor. In addition to the architectural design, Bottoni also designed furniture for the house, including The Table and Twelve Chairs in white maple and black lacquered pear, now on display at the Wolfsoniana. Bottoni's intervention consists of a profound transformation of a traditional nineteenth-century house into a modern villa, in which the concepts of rationalism are introduced: functional distribution of space, ornament-free interior decoration, and large spaces. The dining room set matched the overall room solution: the oval table top covered with frosted crystal reflected the light from the long openwork chandelier hanging above and the golden yellow color of the walls. The aquarium, placed inside a partition fit into the play of light and reflections. From the hall opened access to the vestibule with a helical concrete staircase with crystal slab balusters, recessed without any iron uprights, and handrails made of black polished pear wood, like the tabletop. Furnishings for the dining room of Villa Bedarida in Livorno, including a table and eight chairs. The furniture is made of maple and black-stained pear wood. The table has a central crystal insert while the seats of the chairs are covered with velvet chenille.

MWJ167

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 24,5; Larghezza: 19,5; Profondità: 12,5

terracotta- invetriatura

The subject of the decorative motif of the two Vendemmia vases is recurrent in the works of Gio Ponti, a Milanese architect and artistic director of the Richard Ginori porcelain factory. Starting in 1923, the old Florentine factory tends to renew its production inspired by the new modernist trends. Gio Ponti is a protagonist of this renewal: inspired by the traditional and classical forms and subjects of historical ceramic production, he elaborates new refined and elegant models, aligned with Deco and 20th-century trends, promoting them through participations in exhibitions, including the 1923 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, the Monza Biennials of Decorative Art and the Milan Triennials, and in the pages of the magazine “Domus,” which he founded in 1928.
Subjects related to grape harvesting and wine preparation were conceived in 1927 for the Alla Penna tavern in Milan, for which Gio Ponti designed the interior design and decoration, together with the other architects of the Labirinto group. The theme was so successful that Ponti transposed it into several ceramic objects, mass-produced by Richard Ginori. The designs decorating the Wolfsoniana vases can be found in two of the four tiles (“The Harvest” and “The Transport,” 1927), on plates dedicated to the harvest theme, and in the sculptural group “The Promised Land” made with Italo Griselli (1927-1930). Pair of glazed earthenware vases decorated with figures related to the grape harvest and wine preparation.

GX1993.384

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 50; Larghezza: 32

terracotta- invetriatura

Davide Fabbri founded in Rome in 1921, in collaboration with Renzo Cellini, the artistic ceramics factory “La Salamandra”; but with the purchase of the brand by Buitoni, the kiln was transferred the following year to Perugia, and in 1930, on the occasion of the Fourth International Triennial in Monza, he presented a selection of his repertoire within the Galleria della Ceramica, ordered by architect Tommaso Buzzi. Among the ceramics on display appeared this Vase with Greyhounds, a work connoted in its elegant and monumental forms by the fusion of Deco taste and the Novecentist inflections then prevailing. Embellished with turquoise enamel tinting, the vase's structure features an ovoid body with a fluted surface and a massive circular foot. From the cylindrical neck departs the curl that forms the loops of the vase, within which are inserted the stylized silhouettes of two snappy greyhounds.

GX1993.318

Unità di misura: UNR; Misure mancanti: MNR

Terracotta invetriata policroma

The Monza table service, or also called Margherita because of the decoration on the plates that simulates the flower's corollas, was exhibited by Andlovlitz at the Second Monza Biennial in 1925. The artist, who in his role as art director of the Società Ceramica Italiana in Laveno developed, like Gio Ponti with Richard Ginori, a fruitful collaboration between designer and ceramic industry, approached the iconographic and stylistic models of the Wiener Werkstätten in this era. In fact, the accompanying elements of this service are connoted, in line with one of the main expressive trends of the Deco style, by a neo-eighteenth-century taste, characterized by stylized and ironic decorative motifs. Glazed and painted earthenware table service with a decoration of flowering figures and corollas.

GX1993.206.1-2

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 117; Larghezza: 61; Profondità: 53

legno di noce- intaglio

Ettore Zaccari devoted himself to cabinet-making from a very young age and, after attending the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and the Scuola Civica d'Arte del Castello Sforzesco, opened a workshop in Milan on Via Pisacane, whose activity continued after his death in 1922. This armchair was exhibited in 1923, paired with another identical one, in the dining room presented in the Lombard section at the 1st Monza Biennale. This dining room, which was awarded a diploma of honour, was executed by the Zaccari workshop, which also designed the upholstery and wall decorations in a style that looked to the tradition of Renaissance furniture but also to the lesson of French furniture makers, in particular Maurice Dufrène, in the exuberant and dense carving decoration of polished wood. Black polished walnut armchair. The large and animated decoration of the backrest is delimited by a sequence of vertical lines ending in two gilded scrolls.

GD1994.67

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 83; Larghezza: 65; Profondità: 65

legno- pittura

Painter, illustrator and set designer, Grassi approached Duilio Cambellotti through their shared interest in the rural world, particularly that of the Agro Romano, which inspired them both in their furniture designs. Illustrated in the magazine “La Casa”, to which they both collaborated in those years, their furniture presents simplified forms in solid wood without nails. On the occasion of the Roman section of the I Monza Biennial in 1923, Grassi designed three rooms: the dining room, the young lady's bedroom and a double bedroom with sugar-coloured furniture, characterised by silver decorations and the shell motif. This room, from which the Wolfsoniana armchair comes, was bought at the Monza Biennale by Professor Giuseppe Lugli of Rome, a friend of the artist. The armchair was made by FIM, Fabbrica Italiana Mobili, which was based in Turin. Painted wooden armchair with a decoration of two spiral shells on the backrest.

GX1993.62

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 165; Larghezza: 38

ferro battuto

A pupil of Alessandro Mazzucotelli, Carlo Rizzarda, having achieved international success in 1926, purchased an old palace in his native Feltre, furnishing it with his art collection and wrought irons. After his death, this building became the home of the Rizzarda Museum, in whose collection several works by the artist appear, dated between 1923 and 1926 and characterised by the decorative motif of birds, also used by his master Mazzucotelli. Alongside this theme, the Fountain with Little Birds in the Wolfsoniana also presents that of the “frozen fountain”, elaborated in the years of the spread of the Art Deco taste in many linguistic and expressive variants and here resolved by Rizzarda through the creation of frosty metal gushes. Wrought iron fountain with numerous gushing water jets and a pair of birds on the edge of the basin.

GX1993.47

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 110; Larghezza: 128; Profondità: 52

legno di rovere

In the Triveneto section at the First Monza Biennale Vittorio Zecchin presented a dining room for which he designed furniture, glassware, ceramic plates and tapestries. The furniture included a table, some chairs, and benches and a sideboard made of oak stained black with gilded engravings of stylised flowers, deer and fawns. This decorative motif, present in the bench in the Wolfsoniana (GX1993.48), had a variant with fish figures in the sideboard also exhibited in 1923 at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan. The exemplar in the museum was originally decorated with silver spouts. Sideboard in oak lacquered in black and embellished with a carved motif of gilded fish. The inside of the left door is stamped with the engraved initials of Vittorio Zecchin.

GX1993.398

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 40; Larghezza: 24

ceramica

Roberto Rosati, a pupil of Duilio Cambellotti, after graduating from the Regio Istituto d'Arte per la Ceramica in Faenza in 1912, opened his first ceramics workshop in collaboration with the art dealer Giuseppe Sprovieri. After the First World War he collaborated with the La Fiamma factory in Rome, which was bought in 1924 by Ferruccio Palazzi. In 1923, he took part in the First International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza in the Rome section, where he exhibited his “Vaso con gallo” (Vase with Cock), whose simple form corresponds to the models in use in the circle of Roman ceramists. The distinctive feature of his production is the decorative motifs of coloured dots, which define the natural or geometric elements depicted. Curvilinear ceramic vase without handles and lid. The decoration consists of a motif of coloured and gilded dots that emphasise and define the plant and geometric elements depicted. The image of the rooster, which occupies a large part of the surface, despite its realistic physiognomy accentuated by brown contours, is rendered through an overall graphic stylisation.

87.906.11.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 178; Larghezza: 107; Profondità: 52

legno di noce- verniciatura

A pupil and collaborator of Cambellotti, Melchiorre Melis moved to the capital in his twenties, where, following his master's lesson, he devoted himself to a total art production, creating paintings, illustrations, furniture, ceramics, jewellery, embroidery, toys and exhibition layouts. Bound to the iconographic and stylistic themes of his homeland, he revisited them with originality, as demonstrated by the decorations and subjects of his ceramics and the revival of typical motifs of Sardinian tradition, updated in an Art Deco key, present in this sideboard that, probably conceived in collaboration with his brother Federico, was executed by the Clemente Brothers of Sassari. Walnut sideboard stained black decorated with geometric friezes. On the upper part of the cabinet is a glazed tile, painted with the profile of a woman wearing a headdress and large earrings.