Prototype ‘Mariposa’ sofa, designed for the XI Milan Triennale at Phillips estimated £70,000 – 90,000 and sold for £252,000!!!
Tag: Phillips (Phillips de Pury & Company)
The Phillips auction house that formerly was known as Phillips de Pury and Company
Set of 2 Armchairs by Studio BBPR at Phillips
Phillips will auction a pair of armchairs by Studio BBPR on November 12 and estimates them at £20,000 – 30,000.
Sold for £66,780
Studio BBPR
From each member’s family name, came the acronym “BBPR” of the partnership.
Gian Luigi Banfi was born in 1910 and passed away in 1945 in Camp Mauthausen.
Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso
Enrico Peressutti
and
Ernesto Nathan Rogers (March 16, 1909 – November 7, 1969)The BBPR studio was formed in Milan in 1932 in a climate described by Giorgio Ciucci as “oscillating between differing and contrasting positions.”[1] Their contribution to the development of Rationalism is evident not only in their architecture but in their involvement with MIAR and the journal Quadrante born as a rival to Casabella. Their work held general appeal and was also appreciated and promoted by Edoardo Persico and Giuseppe Pagano at Casabella. Along with the editor Valentino Bompiani, the BBPR group is credited for the original idea for the Italian Civilisation building. The selection of the Guerrini-La Padula-Romano project was fraught with polemics since it is argued that their eulogy to the most Roman of architectural motif – the arch – is what won them first prize, a prize which some say deservedly belonged to the Milanese architects. Their adherence to Fascism was short-lived and they soon became members of the resistance: Banfi and Belgiojoso were imprisoned at the Mathausen concentration camp where Banfi died and Rogers, being of Jewish descent, was forced into exile in Switzerland.
The practice continued under the same name after the Second World War despite the death of Banfi in Mauthausen concentration camp.
The firm came to notice after World War II with the abstract design for the Monument to the Victims of Nazi Concentration Camps, erected within the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano. Located in the centre of an open plaza, its white, tubular frame encloses a glass cube that holds a mess tin containing blood-soaked earth from the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. Panels of black and white marble bear inscriptions about martyrdom and persecution, justice and freedom. Around the Monument, a series of tombstone-shaped plaques show an alphabetical list of names of Milanesi who died in concentration camps.
BBPR reacted against the polemic of the International Style in 1954, with the creation of the Torre Velasca in Milan, complete with its abstract medieval references. The tower responds to its prominent location near the Milan Cathedral in the city’s historic centre.
The firm were subsequently employed to create new interior spaces and exhibition designs for the museums housed within Milan’s Castello Sforzesco, which had been severely damaged by allied bombing in 1943.
source Wikipedia
P.S.
I’ve been working hard to move the site again to a new server. That’s the reason our e-mail followers received a notice of the Birth of Chairblog, a post that memorated an earlier change of server. Now the reason was that the site was hosted on a Centos version 6 server which Linux taste server software is coming to the end of its life span and has been replaced by Centos 7. There even is a Centos 8. Never a dull moment in hossting land.
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Chairs!
gje
Office Chair by Carlo Mollino
In a New York auction of Phillips in 2014 this chair designed in 1959 for Carlo Mollino’s office at the Facoltà di Architettura, Politecnico di Torino and Produced by Apelli & Varesio, was sold for a whopping $758,500.
What makes this object so special?
It is necessary to clarify that Mollino was not an industrial designer; he was not interested in designing objects for industrial production, which would require compromising the object in order to keep down production costs, to allow for mass production, for packaging, and so forth. Mollino’s furniture is unique and was expensively handmade by extraordinarily talented cabinetmakers with a very specific method, described by one of his students:
“Mollino used to shape an idea and make a technical drawing, specifying the construction method and adding notes on various aspects. I used to pick up these drawings from his studio and with Apelli convert it on a 1:1 scale on spolvero paper. Mollino used to come (running like a fawn), to check, review, amend, and then approve or redesign with a graphite pencil. Production was next. Hard times for the craftsman…”1
As illustrated in the Polaroids which appear here, Mollino makes visible, with an immediate photographic representation, how he intends the chair to be a synthesis of the female body’s perfection of beauty and sensuality, represented by the chair’s physiognomy, which alludes to the female form. On the other hand this chair is formally perfect: it is well-planted to the ground; the back is segmented to account for the human backbone; and the seat, modeled to be as comfortable as possible, is functional and ergonomic.
….
This chair embodies and testifies to the history of human tradition. Mollino had a strong knowledge of ancient history and culture and was able to penetrate to the essence of objects. It is from the Alps tradition that Mollino deduced the structure of his chair: comparing this example with a traditional 19th-century Alpine chair, from which Mollino took his inspiration, it is clear that the two share the same height, the same inclination to back and legs, the same simple and perfect technique used to mount the back, the same seat and legs that give this chair an incredible structure. It is a refined and functional elegance, the work of an engineer.
Armchairs with Headrest by Ilmari Tapiovaara
Sold at Phillips October 18, 2018 for £16,250 while estimated at £15,000 – 20,000
Armchairs by Renzo Zavanella
October 18, 2018 two armchairs by Renzo Zavanella were sold at Phillips for £35,000 while estimated between £18,000 – 24,000.