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Price category: 7,500 - 10,000 usd / eur‎

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Born into a family of furniture makers, Melchiorre Bega represented a leading figure in the Italian architectural and design revolution during the interwar era. His vocabulary, represented by this pair, is made of clean lines and essential volumes that challenged the consolidated traditions of bourgeois design, while capturing the modern rhythm of a more modern society. He managed to apply a perfect proportion of volumes and a simplicity of lines both to his architectural project and furniture design.

Bega’s career spanned throughout five decades and three fashions: rationalism, international style and brutalism. Prominent in the 30s to 50s, Bega’s work featured on many occasions in Gio Ponti’s Domus magazine. The subtle decorative qualities stemming from the early 20th century art movements and the simple lines deriving from the inter-war art movements give these chairs their elegance. The design epitomizes the unique blend of style, craftsmanship, and innovation that characterized Italian design in the mid-20th century. There are several features shows these different style elements starting with the fully upholstered, sculptural bodies and tapered solid wood legs with distinctive brass caps. The clearly lined frames  - especially the arms - contrast beautifully with the angled legs and create a light appearance. While the refined linearity defines the overall aesthetic, functionality was clearly an important aspect of the design. Due to the well-chosen proportions and upholstered bodies, this pair offers great comfort for both the eyes and the body.

Italian Modern furniture is defined by unique design, perfect execution, and exclusivity. This pair of lounge chairs is generally attributed to Italian icon of design and architecture, Melchiorre Bega. Countering the often quite vivid colours and designs of the era, the beautiful wooden legs and brass caps are paired with a luxurious light, wool blend upholstery.

Condition:

In good vintage condition. Wear consistent with age and use. The chairs have been reupholstered recently in a premium wool blend fabric. Each of our items can be re-upholstered by our in-house atelier in a fabric of choice. Please reach out for more information.

Dimensions:

23.62 in W x 22.44 in D x 31.88 in H; Seat height 16.92 in; Arm height 24.6 in

60 cm W x 57 cm D x 81 cm H; Seat height 43 cm; Arm height 62.5 cm

About the designer:

Melchiorre Bega (Crevalcore, Bologna, 1898-Milan, 1976) was a prominent figure of 20^th century Italian architecture. Whereas the writing of histories has not made him a full-fledged protagonist, still throughout his five-decades-long career he had the occasion to cross and interpret the main movements and ideas of his times. From the 1930s rationalism, to the 1950s international style, and later on even brutalism, though peripherally – and to get in touch with first-tier intellectuals, such as Gio Ponti.

Already in the 1930s and the 1940s, it is precisely Ponti’s Domus Magazine that gives extensive consideration to Bega’s projects, which are mostly upper-middle-class residences in Milan, Bologna, and Rome. Casa Dellepiane (1939) and Casa Galimberti (1939), both in Milan, and the R. apartment in Rome (1942) well exemplify his cultivated but pragmatic approach, anything but radical. In fact, he integrated a few elements of a rationalist-inspired modernity within domestic interiors that are all-in-all traditional, both for their materials and for their space layout.

His works include over 300 design projects in the major cities of Italy and abroad. In Milan and Bologna alone, Bega designed 40 retail stores, 8 hotels and 41 public buildings. His commissions abroad took him to Tripoli, Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, London, Geneva, Ankara and New York, where he oversaw the interior design of the Palazzo d’Italia in Rockefeller Center. He was comfortable working at any scale, from the intimate to the monumental2—product design, furniture, private homes and apartments, retail shops, cafés and bars, hotels and movie theaters, banks and office high-rises, churches and schools, yachts and cruise ships. And for most of these assignments, he also designed the furnishings and oversaw their manufacture.