Zanotta – a design for life

When is a piece of furniture not merely a piece of furniture? In the case of Zanotta, the answer is when a standard household object is transformed into a fabulous work of art. This celebrated Italian design house has an illustrious 55-year record of making the ordinary seem extraordinary.

Founded in 1954 by Aurelio Zanotta, experts claim that Zanotta is one of the main protagonists in the history of Italian industrial design. The brand has chosen its collaborators very cleverly and, over the years, this trailblazing company has worked with designers of the calibre of Achille Castiglioni, Gae Aulenti, Marco Zanuso, Joe Colombo, Alfredo Haberli, Werner Asslinger, Andrea Branzi, Carlo Mollino, Ross Lovegrove and the late Ettore Sottsass, one of the chief proponents of Postmodern design and founder of the Memphis Group.

By the 1960s Zanotta had already carved a name for itself, creating products that can possibly be best described as furniture of ideas. In 1968 it struck gold with Sacco, its iconic beanbag chair and the product with which many people still associate these giants of design. Created by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro it proved so popular that, more than 40 years later, it is still in production.

In 1989 Zanotta instituted the Zanotta Edizioni collection. This important stage in the company’s development followed a specific philosophy; the furniture produced was largely handmade to free it from the constraints of mass-production and allowed the designers to revive some of Italy’s famous artistic traditions. With the prevailing Postmodern impetus towards decoration, ancient crafts such as mosaic, inlay and intricately painted decoration were once more part of this company’s artistic agenda.

The idea was that clients would choose furnishings for their home with the attention to detail that they would normally reserve for paintings, sculptures, rugs or tapestries. Functionality is vitally important, but so too are considerations like colour and texture – clients are encouraged to express themselves through their furniture.

The typical Zanotta customer is a culture vulture and design aficionado, a situation which seems only fitting considering that Zanotta’s designs are referenced in design history books and displayed at some of the world’s finest museums. Establishments of the calibre of New York’s Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) and Metropolitan Museum, Paris’s Centre George Pompidou, the London Design Museum, Berlin’s Arts and Crafts Museum, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem all attest to the importance of this inventive design house.

Furniture of this pedigree and quality is anything but cheap but, as with most objects of desire, it is a price worth paying to own a piece that is not just a functional and beautiful addition to one’s home, but a modern work of art.

Zanotta website.

Great examples of fine décor:

A Valencia masterpiece in Cullera, styled by Hernani.

Another example of fine décor in Valencia.

A luxury apartment in the center of Valencia

Another designer finished apartment in Valencia

New post on at Friday, 4 December, 2009, 6:44 am and is archived in Art, Culture, Lifestyle, Luxury. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.