Tea Table
Brooklyn Museum photograph
About this Brooklyn Icon
The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.
The Italian government gave this tea table to the Brooklyn Museum for the traveling exhibition Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today. Organized by more than a dozen institutions, the show opened here in 1950 and toured nationwide for three years. It was meant to expose Americans to modern Italian design, which was heavily inspired by industrial design, and reestablish a cultural and consumer connection that would benefit both countries. If Americans liked the interior designs and furnishings they saw, then Italian craftspeople and designers would have a steady stream of work—bolstering Italy’s economy and taking attention off of the nation’s fascism.
While the simplified form and industrial materials of this tea table suited mass production, designer Carlo Mollino’s motivations were conceptual. Inspired by both surrealism and the organic strength of natural structures, he created the table from a single piece of undulating, elegantly asymmetric plywood. The glass top was traced from a drawing of a woman’s torso by artist Leonor Fini. The table stands as a piece that embraces the modernist tastes of a new Italy while also rejecting the global impulse of mass consumption.
Object Label
Today when we think of where inventive contemporary design is manufactured, we often think of Italy. This, however, was not always the case. Wide acceptance of modern design came somewhat later in Italy than elsewhere, perhaps because of the ever-present conservative influence of the palpable Roman classical past and the slow development of the Italian economy in the twentieth century. To be sure, before World War II there were important modern designers in Italy, foremost Gio Ponti, an architect from Milan whose influence spread beyond his native country through two architecture and design magazines he founded, Domus and Stile. And the Fascist regime of Mussolini in the pre-World War II period did embrace modern architecture, unlike the Nazi regime in Germany, which consciously rejected modernism as a source of foreign, moral corruption. It was not, however, until the post-World War II era, when the Italian economy expanded rapidly, that Italian modern design achieved international recognition.
One pivotal event made consumers in the United States aware of the diversity and accomplishments of modern Italian design—the exhibition Italy at Work, which travelled to twelve venues between 1950 and 1954. The exhibition was initiated by the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with two organizations devoted to the promulgation of Italian design, Handicraft Development Incorporated in the United States and its corresponding institution in Italy, CADMA. Italy at Work included hundreds of objects by more than 150 artisans and manufacturers and featured furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles, metalwork, jewelry, shoes, knit clothing, and industrial design. The exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum, and at its conclusion, when the objects were dispersed among the host institutions, the lion’s share, more than two hundred items, came to the Museum.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Italy became a center for modern design. Many foreigners went there to study and work at small, adventurous firms that produced high-quality objects.
Caption
Carlo Mollino Italian, 1905–1973; Appelli F. - Varesio L. & Co.. Tea Table, ca. 1949. Maple plywood, glass, brass, 20 1/2 x 47 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. (52.1 x 120.7 x 54 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Italian Government, 54.64.231a-c. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 54.64.231a-c_edited_SL1.jpg)
Tags
Designer
Title
Tea Table
Date
ca. 1949
Geography
Place made: Italy
Medium
Maple plywood, glass, brass
Classification
Dimensions
20 1/2 x 47 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. (52.1 x 120.7 x 54 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of the Italian Government
Accession Number
54.64.231a-c
Rights
Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Frequent Art Questions
Does the museum have other works by Carlo Mollino?
The Brooklyn museum only has two masterpieces by Mollino and this is the only one on view at the moment.Are you a big fan of modernist design? We have similar examples of American Modernist furniture on the 5th floor!Yes. A bit. Love the bent plywood he uses here.Tell me more.
This little table was made around 1949 and uses bent plywood in a creative way! After WWII, Italians used industrial design to help rebuild their economy. It was actually shown in the seminal design show "Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today" here at the Brooklyn museum in 1950! It exposed americans to Italian post WWII design.
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