The uniqueness of Italian design is that it has changed the perception of the industrial object from a craft product reproduced in serial form to an ‘open form’ of creativity that evolves and becomes the image of a period and a taste. An enlightening example can be found in the history of Fontana Arte, a Milanese company that, through the direction and creativity of two authentic masters such as Gio Ponti and Pietro Chiesa, interpreted the evolution of taste and civil society, an evolution of the ‘objects’ proposed by their lines that also captured the succession of social, cultural and artistic changes. From the Thirties to the Sixties, Fontana Arte changed its physiognomy from classical, decorative and upper middle class, to essential in the choice of solutions that combined functionality and impeccable style, to spatial in the renewed and innovative relationship with light, which merged the industrial product in all its most modern meanings: function, form, space-object relationship, seriality of the product, always according to high quality construction and materials.
Pietro Chiesa was a refined master of the art of glassmaking, who knew better than anyone else how to use crystal in the creation of furniture, lamps, perfect technique and an inexhaustible variety of models.
The next Design and Italian style Web-only exhibition to be held between 9 and 21 March 2023 will feature a Chiesa hanging lamp produced by Fontana Arte in the 1930s and 1940s in brass, painted aluminium, curved and partially etched glass and sandblasted glass (lot 30 estimated at €1,200 – €1,600) that is a superb example of a production that stands out for its severe elegance.