GG2018.7

Unità di misura: UNR

argento

Arrigo Finzi's silverware bearing the “Sant'Elia” mark, deposited on October 16, 1933, although starting out with a production inspired by the designs of the futurist Antonio Sant'Elia, with whom the Milanese silversmith had become acquainted in 1909 and with whom he had forged a relationship of friendship and artistic collaboration, dramatically interrupted by the young architect's untimely death on the front of World War I, more than to the Futurist language, however, they distinguished themselves, through the essentiality and delicacy of their forms, by their evident adherence to the expressive instances of the Deco taste, with tangencies both with contemporary Lombard production and with emerging Central European trends. Silver centerpiece in the shape of a wine cup. The spiral-worked handles end with a bunch of grapes.

GG2018.11a-e

Unità di misura: UNR

metallo argentato

One of the most qualifying aspects of the autarkic period was the production of new materials, especially in the fields of construction, furniture and fashion. Among the metals was alpacca-an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, known as German silver-used by the Milan branch of Krupp-Società Anonima Italiana Metalli for a series of tableware designed by Gio Ponti, or Metargent, the brand under which in the early 1930s the Milanese silversmith Arrigo Finzi began initialing objects related to the sports sector and with which he also marked his 1940-1941 Autarchy service. Metargent, a highly silver-plated, engraving-unalterable off-white metal, already used for sports cups that in the titles themselves recalled the linguistic repertoire and slogans of Fascist propaganda, thus became, in the midst of the autarky campaign, a material suitable for supporting the policy of economic self-sufficiency promoted by the regime. Metal tea set consisting of cup, teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl.

GD1994.71.1-17

Unità di misura: UNR

porcellana

Having graduated as an architect from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1923, Guido Andlovitz was hired as a consultant by the Società Ceramica Italiana of Laveno and became its artistic director in 1927: a position he would hold for about forty years. Alongside ceramic production, he was also involved in the design of furnishings, as in the case of the boudoir presented at the Fifth Milan Triennale in 1933, where an all-white version of this service was on display, whose trademark with the words “Verbano-Laveno” indicated that it was “ dinnerware porcelain.” Porcelain coffee service consisting of two cups with saucer, teapot, milk jug, and sugar bowl; the pieces are decorated with a red and black line pattern.

MWJ111

Unità di misura: UNR

porcellana

Within the heated debate on the art industry that inflamed the Italian research context between the 1920s and 1930s, Ponti's ceramics for Richard Ginori stood out, despite their modern formal approach, for a peculiar stylistic syncretism imbued with references to remote eras and classicism, as in the case of the “Barbara” service, made in different color versions and with different decorations. Coffee service consisting of coffee pot, sugar bowl and creamer. The pieces are made of blue and white painted porcelain with gold details.

GX1993.124

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 90; Larghezza: 260; Profondità: 58

legno dipinto

The buffet designed by architect Bruno Paul, with its pure, rigorous and austere geometric shape, without any decorative motifs and marked by the overlapping convex bands, was exhibited in 1928 in the German section at the Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art at Macy's department store in New York. Published in “Domus” magazine, it was particularly praised by Gio Ponti for its original chromatic harmony, achieved through the unprecedented juxtaposition of ochre-pistachio with the silver of the outlines and the white of the marble slab. Buffet with an elongated shape realized in painted wood and marble. The furniture is devoid of decorative motifs but attracts attention by the convex volumes of the greenish wood bands contrasted with the lines of white marble.

GX1993.199.1-13

Unità di misura: UNR

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

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.