Carlo Mollino’s rare chair for the Lattes Publishing House in Turin

The most important semi-annual live auction in Cambi Auction House’s number one department returns with the most prized Designer Design. A careful selection of rare and unpublished elements and objects of furniture, lighting, masterpieces signed by the most famous masters of Italian and international design.

Absolute protagonist of the auction and catalog cover, is lot 33, a rare chair by Carlo Mollino made for the Gallery of the Lattes Publishing House in Turin. This extraordinary work, dated 1951, features a curved and polished walnut plywood frame, resinflex technical fabric and brass metal details. Only four examples of this chair exist, with an archival number at the Casa Mollino Museum: CM 323-4. This chair is not only an example of high craftsmanship, but also a historic piece that embodies the innovation and elegance of postwar Italian design (Estimate: €80,000.00 – 120,000.00).

Fulvio Ferrari of the Casa Mollino Museum in Turin tells us the story of this iconic chair:

“Carlo Mollino. Chair for Casa Editrice Lattes, Turin, 1951. Curved plywood. Polished brass joints. Resinflex technical fabric.

Turin, June 2024. What flows behind me is the scenery of today’s Art. The real one, the one we see from our car stopped at the traffic lights.

So let’s go into the world for which this chair was designed. A world of books, vibrant, full of vision and future. There it is, the printed paper. A tangle of colossal and exquisite machines that indelibly imprint the history of man encapsulated in the books that sit in our homes. Mario Lattes made his profession a ceremony and asked Carlo mollino in 1951 to build a very modern cathedral that would house the offices, editorial staff and an art gallery to realize life at the highest possible level.”

“Mollino is galvanized by the vision of Mario Lattes and makes, even with the complex technique of curved plywood, furniture of absolute technical avant-garde. They are so advanced that they still seem contemporary to us today. Everything is designed. From the large glass-framed front door with sculptural ceramic handles, to the unprecedented luminous eaves, to the details of the coat racks.

To this day, the Lattes retains the original plans, including those in which Mollino details every structural element of the chair, and to our surprise we even find the 1951 invoice informing us that a chair cost the same as a clerk’s monthly salary. To make the point, it is as if we were furnishing a company’s office today with chairs costing 2,000 euros each.”

“The best craftsmen in Turin, an artisan city par excellence, make the metal components that are turned one by one. They make the curved plywood we see here in its succession of thin alternate layers, composed by crossing the direction of the fibers, glued with hot glue.

Curves in general-it is well known-fascinate Mollino. He designs, whether for the world of skiing, aerobatics or even racing cars, worlds of marvelous curves.

In his modern cathedral, Mario Lattes, a publisher who collects Max Ernst, Balthus, De Chirico, Morandi, writes, invents art magazines, to which Mollino also contributes. And not to be bored, he paints, going so far as to participate in the ’58 Venice Biennale.”

“But we forgot our own Stefania Fersini! Where is she? You brought us the chair on the turntable that allows us to see every detail. What fate to give this precious object? The best possible one. So that the stories of man remain and comfort us a little in our increasingly complicated existence.”