The present lot is registered in the library of the Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, as number CM255-2.

Phillips would like to thank Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, Lisa Ponti, Milan and Mark McDonald, New York, for their assistance cataloguing the present lot.

On the occasion of their wedding, Carlo Mollino gifted a set of six “Tipo B” chairs, a sofa and two armchairs to Lisa Ponti (daughter of his friend and colleague Gio Ponti) and Luigi Licitra. Mollino had designed three different models for this project, though “Tipo A” and “Tipo C” were never produced. This design also marked a departure in material choice for Mollino, as these were made in brass and Resinflex. Other examples from the set are in the collections of Bruno Bischofberger, Switzerland, and Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, Santa Monica.

LISTENING TO MOLLINO

The pieces of furniture Mollino designed for us – Lisa Ponti and Luigi Licitra, two young newly-weds fifty years ago – were magnificent, unprecedented signatures. But it was also wonderful for us to meet Mollino, and listen to Mollino in “Il Messaggio della Camera Oscura.” Reading and listening to Mollino in countless, impatient letters. We were on very close terms with him: the godfather of our youngest child, at his baptism he gave him a “pedal rocket” (streamlined and silver, like the racing car Mollino designed for Le Mans). In those years, the perfect discussion would take place at night between Mollino and Luigi, another mental acrobat. I was forgiven for my sleepiness in those days. On the other hand, I was often not forgiven for Stile – for the way it was, or wasn’t. An ad lib magazine.

“Ponti led me to achieve international recognition,” Mollino used to say. (But this was a reluctant Mollino, in those days, heedless of the world.) And yet it was Mollino who, through his works and reflections, gave Ponti the best of himself. And it was he who aroused in Ponti a desire for critique: “but said with admiration,” as was the Mollino form of criticism that Ponti liked best.

In contact "from a distance" from as early as 1937 (Pagano enlightened them from afar) it was only through Stile that Mollino and Ponti tuned out to be friends. They were unlike each other, those two. (Ponti, the Olympian, had no notion of his “so-called enemies,” while Mollino, persecuted by Mollino, saw enemies everywhere). But the two saw eye to eye on the subject of architecture: architecture as art and – “the ultimate aspiration of art”- as “expression.” And it was in Stile, in April 1944, that Ponti had the reward and the enchantment of listening to Mollino through ten pages of manuscripts and images. This was the project for a “House on the Heights.” This was a Mollino who left no doubt as to what he thought, dreamt and knew.

“Dear Ponti, I would not like to violate the Gospel by adapting it to the purposes of architecture. Together with the Gospel, I have also found De Maistre’s Journey in this old house in Rivoli. I would like to quote a piece: St Luke IX, 33-35 “Peter saith to Jesus: Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses; and one for Elias: not knowing what he said. And as he spoke these things, there came a cloud and overshadowed them…” Possibly, when he said ‘tabernacles,’ Peter was thinking of those tents of the Assyrian kings, with their half domes and courtyards, and their stays and cords – in other words, almost houses. The “House on the heights” I am sending you started off a bit like this: a "rigid" tent, both a pavilion and something more, as well as being the hunting tent of the Assyrian… Here, between you and I, I can allow myself to paraphrase what I would like to have already expressed in form. You will be my judge. Among select friends, one can also “sit in peace”, and comment to oneself…”

Stile, the “unfindable” magazine, the magazine of dream-world designs – was short-lived. With Domus, as from 1948, for all of us it was a matter of meeting the public. Were things changing or was it we who were changing? Domus immediately published the stunningly beautiful "mountain architecture" by Mollino, “an architect who is a threat to weak spirits “– together with his interiors and furniture , furniture, furniture: but what did it know of Leonardesque Mollino – the Mollino who invented asymmetrical skis and built tiny biplanes in which to do the aerobatics that “calmed his nerves?" From Stile to Domus Mollino continued his reproach, meaning his reproaches to me, Lisa, for mistakes, delays and silence… in the true Mollino-style through "letters au citron." The editorial office was a "den of Amazons…”

Was it really? Only now do I realise, when I go through the papers of the 1970s, that this was not the case. Mollino was A winged rider. All he needed was a gesture, some act of kindness from us, and the "den" became a royal palace – the “place of Amazons” (which he drew and sent me) to glide over, while still in doubt…

LISA PONTI