The Furniture of Carlo Mollino (Relié)

Original and inventive, the work of Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is a unique chapter in the history of twentieth-century Italian design and architecture. For the first time, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino presents his complete works in furniture and interior design. Most of Mollino's furniture was site specific with one-off pieces created for specially commissioned interiors. Rarely available, these works are highly sought after by collectors and design enthusiasts alike. The 1948 table featured on the jacket and on page 143 recently created a new world auction record for a piece of twentieth-century furniture when it sold for almost $4 million, double the previous record. From the start, both Mollino's interests and personality set him apart from his contemporaries. Influenced by the Second Futurist and Surrealist avant-gardes, Mollino was a modern-day Renaissance man active in an impressive number of fields, such as aeronautics, automobile design, art, photography, set design, town planning, furniture, interior decoration and architecture. Through his extensive artistic research, he was able to combine various contrasting forms of expression, which gave his work a remarkable and unusual dynamic. Mollino's furniture was based on organic shapes, such as tree branches, animal horns and the human body, with the female profile especially promirent in his designs. Beyond this highly personal aesthetic, his workinvolved research into materials and technology, and the development of complex construction techniques, as with the celebrated bent plywood 'Arabesque' table of 1950. Illustrated with original drawings, sketches and archival photographs, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino represents the most comprehensive record of Mollino's design production. Realized in collaboration with the Museo Casa Mollino and written by the museum's curators, Napoleone and Fulvio Ferrari, this monograph offers an exceptional insight into Mollino's groundbreaking oeuvre.