Carlo Mollino experimented with several variations of this design to furnish Casa Miller in Turin, a two-bedroom apartment he designed in 1936 and owned until 1946. Mollino never actually lived in the apartment, but used it as a set for his photographs, where his designs were highlighted alongside models in surrealistic and erotic scenes. The original design has never been found but can be seen below in a photograph by Mollino taken at Casa Mollino (which served the same purpose as Casa Miller) sometime between 1956 and 1962.
Photograph reproduced from Carlo Mollino Photographs 1956-1962, Museo Casa Mollino
In Mollino’s interiors, the furniture seems like an animal ready to pounce.
As a child, Carlo Mollino was smitten by the engineering work of his father and his infatuation led him to the study of constructional engineering and architecture at the University of Turin. After graduating, Mollino worked at his father’s studio before founding his own architectural and interior design practice run out of the same space. He built several famed structures including the Società Ippica Torinese (1937-40, now destroyed), Casa del Sole, Cervinia (1947-54) and the Teatro Regio Torino (1965-73) as well as several private homes and apartments.
Aside from architecture and interior design, Mollino possessed a love of race cars; he created sweptback cars for himself to race and even set a record at Le Mans that remained unbroken for two years. An expert skier obsessed with aerodynamics and clean lines, Mollino wrote a book on the subject. Not only did he love speed and the sleek bodies of automobiles but the voluptuous curves of the female form inspired a series of erotic photographs featuring nude models on and around his own furniture designs. The idealized female form and aerodynamics motivated his design aesthetic, curved backs, slim ankles, and hourglass shapes abound in his furniture designs. Moving away from the austerity of the Modernist movement, Mollino imbued his furniture with a sense of the feminine and the surreal.
Mollino possessed an engineer’s precision that manifests itself in his work. He collected numerous patents for inventions throughout his lifetime, including those for honeycomb concrete, tubular steel, and even a new device for creating perspective drawings. In 1952, he invented a method for cold-pressing thin plywood that allowed him to form his “Arabesque” collection of furniture.
Mollino died suddenly in 1973 at the age of 68; soon after his death, it was discovered that he had created an entire apartment for his afterlife, which expertly mixed his own designs with luminous silks, furs, and gold leaf. A polymath that succeeded in architecture, engineering, automobile racing, and furniture design, Mollino left behind a dizzying legacy of ingenuity in design.
