—By Roberta Lietti, Curator and Archivist at the Archivio del Design di Ico Parisi
Previously known solely as a furniture designer, Ico Parisi began his career as an architect between 1949 and 1950. One of his earliest building projects involved redesigning the façades of an existing villa located in a village in the province of Como, where Parisi was commissioned by the owner to modernise the villa by overlaying the original façade with a new reinforced concrete structure that radically altered its appearance. This project's scope included the addition of a section painted by Mario Radice, an abstract artist who had previously collaborated with Giuseppe Terragni. However, Parisi's intervention was not limited to redesigning the exterior, he also designed several elements for the interior such as the study's fireplace, a living room armchair, and a chaise longue for the bedroom of the client’s wife.
The present lot is a reinterpretation of the bedroom dormeuse, a type of reclining armchair for one person to rest which came back into fashion in high-end interiors of the 1930s and 1940s, gaining its own distinct typological identity. Indebted to the skill of the trusted Cantù artisans, Parisi reinterpreted its typically heavy form (an armchair that extends into the seat and sometimes slightly reclines the backrest), lightening it and giving it a new, modern look. Although its purpose is functional in nature, containing the upholstered section, the wooden structure seems to have a life of its own. Indeed, it appears as a three-dimensional ensemble of stylised, plant-like elements that recall the compositional motifs of the small, but exquisite pieces of furniture Parisi designed for Fede Cheti's exhibitions in 1947. The present rare chaise longue embodies construction techniques that, on the one hand, ensure stability, and on the other, allow for freedom of form, with delicately irregular and organic lines that bring the furniture closer to unusual sculptural solutions.
Indeed, this was in 1950, the year before Parisi's major breakthrough at the IX Milan Triennale, where he would present a series of furniture pieces centred on creative freedom and experimentation, which Gio Ponti described in Domus (1951, no. 259) as containing ''…an extraordinary wealth of suggestions, attempts, ideas…''.
Phillips wishes to thank Roberta Lietti of the Archivio del Design di Ico Parisi for her assistance in cataloguing the present lot.
