Piero Fornasetti Bordo Bassorilievo Coffee Table, Black and Gold, Milan, Circa 1955

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Description

Piero Fornasetti Bordo Bassorilievo Coffee Table, Black and Gold, Milan, Circa 1955

A Piero Fornasetti coffee table is the piece … Read more Piero Fornasetti Bordo Bassorilievo Coffee Table, Black and Gold, Milan, Circa 1955

A Piero Fornasetti coffee table is the piece a room turns on, and this one, in his Bordo Bassorilievo (low-relief border) pattern, has the drama of black and gold to match. A continuous frieze of classical figures, printed from engravings after antique reliefs, runs like a gilt carved border around the top, set into a hand-painted imitation of dark veined marble and sealed under lacquer.

Look closely and the band tells stories: a cavalry battle of rearing horses and fallen warriors along one long side, and along the other a marine procession in which Neptune and his trident ride among sea-horses, nymphs, tritons and putti on dolphins. The short sides carry further groups on foot and horseback, with a centaur at one corner. From across the room the frieze reads as gilt relief; up close it is a print of remarkable finesse.

The base is pure Milanese 1950s: two X-form ends of turned beech legs lacquered a deep bordeaux red and sleeved in brass, crossing at brass bosses and finishing in tapered brass feet, joined by a single black-lacquered stretcher with brass ferrules. The lightness of the base lets the decorated top float. The same X-frame base carried Fornasetti's Caccia (hunt) pattern in 1955. The table is in good condition, with a single very tiny spot on the marbled paint filled in.

At 39 1/4 inches long and 17 3/4 inches high it is sized for a pair of sofas or a sofa and two chairs, and it holds its own in front of a fireplace. It sits as easily with mid-century Italian brass and Gio Ponti seating as with antique gilt and dark portraits, and it is a natural partner to other Fornasetti pieces. Against pale walls the black and gold top becomes the focal point of the room; in a dark lacquered room it glows.

Dimensions
Height: 17 3/4 inches (45.1 cm)
Width: 39 1/4 inches (99.7 cm)
Depth: 19 5/8 inches (49.8 cm)

Marks
Original Fornasetti paper label to the underside, printed in French with the hand-and-brush device and "FORNASETTI · MILANO / MADE IN ITALY"; the care text advises cleaning with a soft, slightly damp cotton cloth, never wool, and an occasional light polish. The French-language label suggests the table was supplied for a French-speaking market.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good. One very tiny spot on the marbled paint filled in. Original Fornasetti Milano label to the underside.

References
Barnaba Fornasetti (ed.), Fornasetti: The Complete Universe (New York: Rizzoli, 2010), p. 389.
Patrick Mauriès, Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991).

Historical Context
Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988), Milanese painter, printer and decorator, was drawn into furniture design through his collaboration with Gio Ponti from 1940. Rather than the clean functionalism of his contemporaries he built a personal iconography from antiquity, architecture, playing cards, the sun and the face of the soprano Lina Cavalieri, applied by lithographic transfer to lacquered wood and metal and finished by hand in his atelier. Bordo Bassorilievo belongs with Cammei and Teste Antiche among his classical themes, and this rectangular top on twin brass X-frame supports was one of the atelier's standard coffee-table forms of the mid-1950s, also issued in the Caccia (hunt) pattern on a black marbleized ground in 1955. See less