20th Century, Carlo Ratti Set of Four Wooden Chairs

The Turin-based cabinetmaker's workshop Apelli & Varesio was established in the mid-1940s by Francesco Apelli and Lorenzo Varesio, to produce wooden moulds for foundries. Until the l...

Finnish Ilmari Tapiovaara, was one of the greatest designers of the twentieth century, a leading exponent of post-war Scandinavian design. Gifted with extraordinary talent, he became...

Dino Gavina began his activity as early as the 1940s with objects for theater sets, his great passion. Convinced of the need for design that was modern but also rich in poetry, he gr...

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The set of four Lulli dining chairs, designed by Carlo Ratti for ILC Lissone in the 1950s, features black painted steel legs combined with a curved and shaped veneered wood seat and ...

This Italian chair model was designed in the 1950s by Carlo Ratti for Industira Legni Curvati Lissoni and is made of bentwood and black lacquered metal legs. The rounded shapes and t...

Set of four dining chairs with a frame in black lacquered metal and seat in curved plywood, attributed to Carlo Ratti and produced by Società Compensati Curvati in the 1950s. In Italy, at the beginning of the XX century, industries of curved solid wood arose under license of Michael Thonet, and through the International Exhibitions the processing of curved wood became more and more widespread. The Expo of the first decade was also attended by the wood manufacturers of Monza, while in 1905 Otto Helzer, in Switzerland, patented wooden structures in curved laminated, whose strength was equivalent to those in steel. The Ratti brothers of Monza took their cue from the solid wood laminate to create furniture that, instead of wooden elements, used sheets of wood. The brothers Ratti, Carlo and Mario, also began to follow the young artistic avant-gardes (cubism, futurism and abstractionism). The mastery of wooden sculpture influenced Carlo in the design and realization of furniture of fine neo-plastic artistic workmanship and decò, receiving honors from the Prince of Piedmont Umberto di Savoia. In 1919, in Milan, the first Lombard Exhibition of Decorative Arts was set up (later to become the Triennale) and the Ratti brothers exhibited their furniture in solid wood but also in curved panel with a new system of curvature, the one in Telo. The canvas system was developed by the Ratti brothers with the help of a friend, Cesare Cantù. They developed an elastomer bag in which the mould was inserted with the panel to be bent and, closing it with clamps, the air inside was removed, thus making the panel adhere to the mould. Carlo and Mario found in the Telo system a means by which they could make objects and furniture in the three spatial directions with large surface curvatures, without limits of thickness and minimum radii of curvature. In 1921 in Stuttgart the first Salone del Mobile was inaugurated and the Fratelli Ratti of Monza made itself known internationally by presenting solid wood furniture and also furniture in load-bearing plywood, flanked by furniture with framed and interchangeable covers. The Expo became meeting places to verify and present the novelties in the furniture and industrialization sector and, with the development of Industrial Design, the first architects joined in the design of the furniture industries. The Ratti Brothers, in the various international and national exhibitions, also presented incredible objects in their realization with the system in Telo. After 1930 Carlo and Mario produced many containers for radio and folding chairs for cinema but in 1939 they divided and in Monza Mario remained who, with his sons Antonio and Angela, formed the Società Compensati Curvi...

A set of six chairs designed by Carlo Ratti for Industria Legni Curvati Lissoni, Italy, 1950's. Plywood seat and black metal base.