Country: Italy
Manufacturers website:
fontanaarte.com
Catalog

In the 1920s, Gio Ponti, one of the most important Italian architects, industrial designers, furniture designers, artists, and publishers of the twentieth century, began his serious work in stained glass, installing his craftsmanship in churches and cathedrals, among them the Duomo of Milan and the Cathedral of Brasilia, Brazil. Ponti soon realized the enormous potential glass had for designing and making furniture and founded Fontana Arte in 1932 as an artistic division of the Luigi Fontana Company,” notes Andrew Fisher, an authorized dealer for FontanaArte through his Arkitektura modern furniture stores located in San Francisco and Birmingham, Michigan near Detroit.

Using glass as the main distinguishing feature, Ponti began to produce furniture, lamps and other interior furnishings to complement the homes he was designing, rapidly creating a body of work that was ready to be marketed as a collection,” the owner of Arkitektura continues.

At present, FontanaArte may be envisioned as offering glass designs from two groups of creative enterprise. The first is from The FontanaArte archives—a major collection of ideas, sketches on paper and designs that were drafted in-house and then developed over the years to become part of the FontanaArte collection. These designs are not associated with the name of any single designer but are the sum of the collective creative energy of the professionals that have worked in the company.

The second is an emerging collection of design work that flows from the distinguished imaginations of FontanaArte designers and evolves into important new designs through FontanaArte’s Ufficio Tecnico, a team of architects, engineers and lighting technicians who support the genius of a new lamp design with a high-quality production process.