Blevio

Ignazio Gardella’s Blevio table joins Molteni&C’s Heritage Collection, inaugurating a partnership with the Gardella Historical Archive: the first episode of a relationship based on research and exchange, destined to develop over the years to come.‎ In 2015 Milan’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna, restructured by Gardella himself, hosted the exhibition on Molteni&C’s 80 years in the furniture business.‎
Designed in 1930, Blevio is a table that Gardella (1905-1999) made as a single model for his own family home, Villa Usuelli in Blevio on Lake Como.‎ It is an extraordinarily harmonious and timeless piece of furniture, which today becomes collective heritage; it combines the purest features and intrinsic simplicity.‎ Gardella was already an established figure on the Italian architecture scene.‎
Elegant and geometrically linear, the Blevio table is rich in design, in details that reveal themselves to the attentive eye.‎ It is the result of a process that removed the superfluous, of the perfect synthesis between form and function, of the careful and selective use of the material that was to become its main aesthetic feature.‎ It is a project that focuses on the essential and on the removal of decoration for decoration’s sake.‎
The upper part of the vertical supports is linked to the table top by means of two wooden capital-shaped elements.‎ The refined and unusual play of counter curves is also a structural stabilizing element: the geometric center of the semicircular extremities of the table top coincides with that of the vertical supports.‎ The use of curved forms responds to the need to emphasize the continuity of the table top, avoiding interruptions.‎ The original piece is coated in copper, a difficult material to keep using for contemporary dinner tables.‎ Molteni&C’s Research and Development Center replaced the copper lamina on the wooden table top with a special metal powder varnish that gives the same effect of solidity and artisanal shine, conferring greater resistance.‎
As an alternative to the 320x96 cm varnished wood top (dimensions), a slab of Breccia Capraia marble was examined; this was inserted into the aluminium surface, for a total thickness of 4 cm.‎ In addition, under the supervision of the Gardella Historical Archive, the proportions of the original design were scaled to match the heights of contemporary dinner tables (h: 77 cm), thereby guaranteeing the respect of the original shape.‎