Zanotta is an Italian furniture company particularly known for the iconic pieces of

Italian design Italian design refers to all forms of design in Italy, including interior design, urban design, fashion design and architectural design. Italy is recognized as being a worldwide trendsetter and leader in design: the architect Luigi Caccia Dominio ...

it produced in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. These include the "Sacco"

bean bag chair The Sacco chair, also called a bean bag chair, beanbag chair, or simply a beanbag (“Sacco” is Italian for “bag, sack”), is a large fabric bag, filled with polystyrene beans, designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro. The p ...

and "Blow", the first mass-produced inflatable chair. The company was founded in 1954 and has its main plant in

Nova Milanese Nova Milanese is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Monza and Brianza in the Italian region Lombardy, located about north of Milan. It received the honorary title of city with a presidential decree. Nova Milanese borders the followin ...

. In 1984 Zanotta established its experimental division, Zabro, headed by Alessandro Guerriero, with Alessandro Mendini and Stefano Casciani. Since the death of its founder, Aurelio Zanotta, in 1991, it has been run by members of his family. Zanotta's products were awarded the Compasso d'Oro in 1967, 1979, 1987 and 2020.

History

The company was founded in 1954 by the young entrepreneur Aurelio Zanotta with its manufacturing plant in

where it remains to the present day. Originally called Zanotta Poltrona, at first it specialised in fairly traditional upholstered furniture. However, by the early 1960s, the company had established a reputation for modern design and began commissioning avant-garde works by designers such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni,

Gae Aulenti Gaetana "Gae" Aulenti (; 4 December 1927–31 October 2012) was an Italian architect and designer who was active in furniture design, graphic design, stage design, lighting design, exhibition and interior design. She was known for her contrib ...

Ettore Sottsass Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, Austria 14 September 1917 – Milan, Italy 31 December 2007) was a 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings an ...

Alessandro Mendini Alessandro Mendini (16 August 1931 – 18 February 2019) was an Italian designer and architect. He played an important part in the development of Italian, Postmodern, and Radical design. He also worked, aside from his artistic career, for ''C ...

and Piero Gatti-Cesare Paolini-Franco Teodoro. In 1965 Zanotta was one of the first furniture companies to use expanded

polyurethane foam Polyurethane products have many uses. Over three quarters of the global consumption of polyurethane products is in the form of foams, with flexible and rigid types being roughly equal in market size. In both cases, the foam is usually behind othe ...

and frameless construction in its designs, most notably the "Throw Away" series of sofas and armchairs designed by Willie Landels. One of Zanotta's most enduring successes was its 1968 "Sacco" bean bag chair, designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro. Sacco has been awarded the XXVI Premio Compasso d'Oro in 2020. and it is exhibited in 26 museums of modern art all over the world, among them the

Museum of Modern Art in New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. It was originally to have used polyurethane foam off-cuts for the filling but eventually settled on

polystyrene Polystyrene (PS) is a synthetic polymer made from monomers of the aromatic hydrocarbon styrene. Polystyrene can be solid or foamed. General-purpose polystyrene is clear, hard, and brittle. It is an inexpensive resin per unit weight. It is a ...

beads. From the 1970s Zanotta achieved further success by re-issuing earlier designs which in their day had been considered too avant-garde for mass production. These included the "Larianna" tubular steel chair designed by

Giuseppe Terragni Giuseppe Terragni (; 18 April 1904 – 19 July 1943) was an Italian architect who worked primarily under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and pioneered the Italian modern movement under the rubric of Rationalism. His most famous work is the C ...

in 1936 and the "Mezzadro" stool designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in the late 1950s. Zanotta established Zabro, its experimental division, in 1983 headed by Alessandro Mendini and Alessandro Guerriero. Amongst the pieces Zabro produced were Mendini's "Dorifora" chair in 1984 and the furniture series "Animali Domestici" (Domestic Animals) designed by

Andrea Branzi Andrea Branzi (, born November 30, 1938) is a Florence-born Italian architect and designer. He currently lives and works in Milan and was a professor and chairman of the School of Interior Design at the Polytechnic University of Milan until 2009. ...

in 1986.. The company launched Zanotta Edizioni coordinated by Stefano Casciani in 1989, "a special collection exploring the boundaries between art and design." The pieces were produced in limited editions and combined industrial manufacture with hand-painted decoration. In 1989, Aurelio Zanotta and several of his designers including Achille Castiglioni, Gae Aulenti, Andrea Branzi, and Ettore Sottsass attended the International Design Conference in Aspen. The conference theme that year was ''The Italian Manifesto''. In his talk at the conference Zanotta described the emergence of the mid-20-century revolution in Italian design and the early years of his own business:

Those were years of great vitality, there was an explosion of constructive energy, a profound desire to sweep away the past and create a new world. The phenomenon of Italian design grew out of this widely felt urge to renew everything.

After Aurelio Zanotta's death in 1991, the company remained in his family. Since 2002 it has been run by Zanotta's three children, Eleonora, Francesca, and Martino. The Italian furniture company Tecno purchased 80% of Zanotta's shares in 2017. However, the two companies maintain separate production, design and management structures.

Notable designs

Notable designs produced by Zanotta include: *"Lariana" chair (1936) originally designed by Giuseppe Terragni for the

Casa del Fascio A ''casa del Fascio'', ''casa Littoria'', or ''casa del Littorio'' () was a building housing the local branch of the National Fascist Party and later the Republican Fascist Party under the regime of Italian Fascism, in Italy and its colonies. ...

. The chair, made from tubular stainless steel with a wooden back and seat, was reissued by Zanotta in 1971 and remained in production until 1995. *"Mezzadro" stool (1957) designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. It was one of three prototypes for stools using found objects which were developed by the Castiglioni brothers in the late 1950s. The "Mezzadro" uses a sheet metal seat cast from that of a 1935 Italian tractor which is balanced on stainless-steel bow and a wooden crosspiece. Zanotta began manufacturing it in 1971 and gave it the name "Mezzadro" which means "

sharecropper Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...

", an allusion to the agricultural associations of its seat. Examples are held in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

and the

Vitra Design Museum The Vitra Design Museum is a privately owned museum for design in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Former Vitra CEO, and son of Vitra founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, Rolf Fehlbaum founded the museum in 1989 as an independent private foundation. The ...

. *"Throw Away" armchair and sofa (1965) designed by Willie Landels in expanded

using a completely frameless structure. Aurelio Zanotta first encountered Landels's pieces while on a trip to London in 1965 and immediately put the chair into production. Sofa versions were produced from 1966 and would later appear in the sets for '' Space: 1999''. Initially, the pieces had washable vinyl covers in bright colors: red, yellow, green, light and dark blue. Later versions were also produced with fabric or leather covers. *"Karelia" easy chair (1966) designed by Liisi Beckmann in undulating forms of expanded polyurethane foam. It was reissued by Zanotta in 2007 and exhibited at Milan's Triennale Design Museum in 2016. *"Guscio" sleeping hut (1966) designed by in prefabricated

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

panels with a

larch Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains furt ...

wood floor. The dome-shaped huts can sleep 2–4 people and can be assembled and disassembled at will. "Guscio" won a Compasso d'Oro in 1967. *"Blow" inflatable armchair in PVC (1967) designed by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino, Carla Scolari, and Paolo Lomazzi. It was the first mass-produced inflatable chair. Examples are held in the

and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. * "Sacco" chair (1968) designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro. Covered in leather or cloth and filled with polystyrene beads, it was the progenitor of the

and is still in production today. Even before the design had been completely finalized, the American department store chain

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

placed an order for 10,000 chairs. Examples of "Sacco" are held in numerous museums including the

Design Museum The Design Museum in Kensington, London exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generat ...

in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sacco won a Compasso d'Oro in 2020. *"Gaetano" table (1973) designed by

. Its plate glass top rests on two removable trestles of lacquered aluminum alloy. It was shown at the

Kölnisches Stadtmuseum The Kölnische Stadtmuseum is the municipal history museum of Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is housed in the building of the historic with the adjacent Prussian . Its collection includes around 350,000 objects from the Middle Ag ...

in the 1980 exhibition ''Italian Furniture Design: Culture and Technology in Italian Furniture 1950-1980''. "Gaetano" was one of the numerous pieces of furniture which Aulenti designed for Zanotta between 1963 and 1986. *"Sciangai" coat rack (1973) designed by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino, and Paolo Lomazzi. The collapsible rack is inspired by the Italian game Sciangai, a form of

pick-up sticks Pick-up sticks, pick-a-stick, jackstraws, jack straws, spillikins, spellicans, or fiddlesticks is a game of physical and mental skill in which a bundle of sticks, between 8 and 20 centimeters long, is dropped as a loose bunch onto a table to ...

. It won a Compasso d'Oro in 1979 and was exhibited at the

Milan Triennial The ''Milan Triennial'' (Triennale di Milano) is an art and design exhibition that takes place every three years at the Triennale di Milano Museum in Milan, Italy. History The exhibition was originally established in 1923 as a biennial architect ...

in 2012. *"Cetonia" chest of drawers (1984) designed by

. One of a series of pieces produced by Zanotta's Zabro division, it is made of lacquered wood with hand-painted decoration. An example is in the permanent collection of the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

. *"Papilio" coffee table (1985) designed by Alessandro Mendini. It consists of two or three levels of plate glass in undulating shapes resting on spindle legs of burnished steel. An example is held in the

Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin __NOTOC__ The Kunstgewerbemuseum, or Museum of Decorative Arts, is an internationally important museum of the decorative arts in Berlin, Germany, part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums). The collection is split between the ...

. *"Tonietta" chair (1985) designed by

Enzo Mari Enzo Mari (27 April 1932 – 19 October 2020) was an Italian modernist artist and furniture designer who is known to have influenced many generations of industrial designers. Early life and education Mari was born in Novara, Italy, and he ...

in die-cast aluminum and leather. It won a Compasso d'Oro in 1987, and an example is held in the Museum of Modern Art. *"Animali Domestici" furniture series (1985–1986) designed by

and consisting of tables, chairs, and benches produced by Zanotta's Zabro division in limited editions. The pieces combined lacquered wood with tree branches and rough wooden slats and sticks. One of the chairs is held in the

. *"Soft"

chaise longue A chaise longue (; , "long chair") is an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs of the sitter. In modern French the term ''chaise longue'' can refer to any long reclining chair such as a deckchair. ...

(1999) designed by Werner Aisslinger, one of the first examples of mass-produced furniture using TechnoGel as visible upholstery. Examples are held in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

and France's

Centre national des arts plastiques The Centre national des arts plastiques (National Centre for Visual Arts, Cnap) is a French institution established in 1982 under the Ministry of Culture and Communication that promotes creation of visual arts. It provides assistance to artists and ...

. *"Veryround Chair" lounge chair (2006) designed by Louise Campbell. Itself circular in shape, the chair is constructed from 260 identical circular modules in different sizes all made from laser-cut steel. It has no legs and no identifiable seat or back. An example is held by the

and was shown in the museum's 2013 exhibition ''Applied Design''.

Gallery

" 11 - ITALY - design and furniture - MEZZADRO - Achille e Pier Giacomo Castiglioni - Zanotta (1957).jpg, "Mezzadro" stool designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (1957) " 12 - ITALY - Pouf Tuffet Sacco di Zanotta red armchair Triennale Design Museum.jpg, "Sacco" chair designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro (1968) "12 - ITALY - Triennale di Milano - Fuorisalone 2012 ( Milan design week ) - Sciangai di De Pas D'Urbino e Lomazzi - Zanotta - Italia - 1973.JPG, "Sciangai" coat rack designed by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino, and Paolo Lomazzi (1973) Alessandro mendini per zanotta spa., cassettiera cetonia, 1984.jpg, "Cetonia" chest of drawers designed by

(1984)

Notes

References

External links