Gio Ponti - Design London Wednesday, November 2, 2022 | Phillips
  • Effortless Cohesion In A Bedroom

     

    By Brian Kish, Curator and Specialist in 20th Century Italian architecture and design 
    Associate member of the Gio Ponti Archives since 2006
     
    This Milanese commission for a headboard with integrated bedside tables, picture frame and drawer unit, was undertaken in the late 1950s. Yet the concept was born in 1951 when Ponti achieved great notoriety for his Hotel Bedroom at the 9th Triennale in Milan. His contribution to that experimental exhibition led to a string of private bedroom commissions through the 1950s, all the way to the present lot and wall-mounted unit with shelves (Lot 99).
     

    Gio Ponti’s design for a hotel room exhibited at the 9th Triennale in Milan, 1951.
    Photo: Gio Ponti Archives

    There are even earlier historical precedents in Ponti’s oeuvre for this type of design. Already in the late 1940s Ponti had formulated a method of organizing and gathering items in the living room such as shelves, drawers, containers, and lighting, which came to full realisation in the 1948 Cremaschi apartment. This is where Ponti introduced his pareti attrezzate, a furniture system he continued to design in the 1950s that can function as a storage organiser, as a partition and/or as a method to enliven the domestic environment.
     

    A parete attrezzata, a furniture system that can function as a storage organiser and method to enliven the domestic environment, circa 1953
    Photo: Gio Ponti Archives

    In the wake of this idea came one of Ponti' s most recognisable iconic designs, the organiser headboard, which involved the strategic placement of shelves, drawer units, and reading lights. In versions developed for commercial hotel rooms many features were integrated in the bedheads: telephones, radios, light switches, and cigarette lighters. Of course, these headboard models and related bedroom furniture exhibit a wide range of Ponti's idiosyncratic profiles, each graceful, tapering, and visually weightless.
     

    An organiser headboard in Gio Ponti’s home in via Dezza, Milan
    Photo: Gio Ponti Archives

    Some of the private commissions turned out to be more demanding than expected to satisfy the clients requirements. At least, this is we can guess when analysing the many surprising details of this circa 1955 suite. Possibly made by Fratelli Radice, who were among a group of his three preferred ebanisti together with Giordano Chiesa and Egidio Proserpio, all known for their exceedingly high quality standards.


    The bedside wall unit is configured into a lengthy rectangular expanse, almost three and half metres of carefully selected walnut timbers, rhythmically studded with cantilevered units of various dimensions. Two identical sets of three elements are stacked on either side of the bed: a bedside shelf delicately balanced on a split brass leg, a thin drawer is suspended above, and on top, striking illuminated framed display nooks. This repetition on a horizontal axis is contrasted with the physical and visual weight differences in the vertical stack. Ponti further challenges this pleasant symmetry by placing a visibly heavier double drawer unit at the extreme right on the same graceful split brass leg as the feather-light shelf on the left. These tensions and juxtapositions characteristic of Baroque Architecture are Ponti's response to some of the Modernist orthodoxy of his times.


    Ponti expanded this archetype in four additional pieces for the same bedroom (Lot 99); together, they are meant to animate the side wall of the same bedroom with a visually exciting and comforting arrangement of elements open to some variations while reflecting his idiosyncratic, tectonic visual reading of reality. The four distinct parts display an elaborate scheme of symmetries and asymmetries: a solitary picture frame is paired with two thick cantilevered glass shelves mounted on walnut panels. This complex, and likewise sober object hangs above a five-panel cabinet whose pleasing geometry is reminiscent of Ponti’s own Pirelli Tower.
     
    Again in this group, as in most Ponti designs, there is a repetitive orchestration of contrasts and counterpoints, voids and solids, and an impressive rhythm of shadow lines. It is a perfect demonstration of his long quest for organised and satisfying interaction with practical objects in interior spaces. After decades of rethinking the bedroom suite and many different iterations, Ponti' s way of obtaining a sense of effortless cohesion from a multitude of elements and intentions comes to its ultimate result in this commission.

    • Provenance

      Private collection, Milan

    • Literature

      Domus, no. 289, December 1953, n.p. for a comparable example
      Domus, no. 315, February 1956, n.p. for a comparable example
      Ugo La Pietra, ed., Gio Ponti: L’arte si innamora dell’industria, New York, 2009, pp. 184-87 for comparable examples

    • Catalogue Essay

      The present lot is part of the same commission as lot 99.

    • Artist Biography

      Gio Ponti

      Italian • 1891 - 1979

      Among the most prolific talents to grace twentieth-century design, Gio Ponti defied categorization. Though trained as an architect, he made major contributions to the decorative arts, designing in such disparate materials as ceramics, glass, wood and metal. A gale force of interdisciplinary creativity, Ponti embraced new materials like plastic and aluminum but employed traditional materials such as marble and wood in original, unconventional ways.

      In the industrial realm, he designed buildings, cars, machinery and appliances — notably, the La Cornuta espresso machine for La Pavoni — and founded the ADI (Industrial Designer Association). Among the most special works by Gio Ponti are those that he made in collaboration with master craftsmen such as the cabinetmaker Giordano Chiesa, the illustrator Piero Fornasetti and the enamellist Paolo de Poli.

      View More Works

98

Headboard with integrated bedside tables, picture frame and drawer unit

circa 1955
Walnut, walnut-veneered wood, glass, brass.
99.6 x 349 x 49.5 cm (39 1/4 x 137 3/8 x 19 1/2 in.)
Possibly executed by Fratelli Radice, Milan, Italy. Together with a certificate of expertise from the Gio Ponti Archives.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for £15,120

Contact Specialist

Antonia King
Head of Sale, Design
+44 20 7901 7944
Antonia.King@phillips.com

Design

London Auction 2 November 2022