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Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

Italian, 1906-1978

Carlo Scarpa was born in Venice in 1906 and became one of the leading figures of architecture and international design during the 20th century. At merely 21 years old — and still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts — Scarpa began working as a designer for master Murano glassmaker M.V.M. Cappellin. Within a few years, he completely revolutionized the approach to art glass. 

In a short time, under the guidance of Scarpa, the Capellin furnace not only established itself as the top glass company, but above all it introduced modernity and international fame to Murano glassmaking. Scarpa created a personal style of glassmaking, a new vision that irreversibly changed glass production. 

The young Scarpa experimented with new models and colors: his chromatic combinations, impeccable execution and geometric shapes became his modus operandi. Thanks to Scarpa’s continuous research on vitreous matter, Cappellin produced a series of high-quality glass objects, that saw the company revisiting ancient processing techniques such as the watermark and Phoenician decoration. 

When he encountered the challenge of opaque glass, Scarpa proposed introducing textures of considerable chromatic impact, such as glass pastes and glazed glass with bright colors. Scarpa also collaborated in the renovation of Palazzo da Mula in Murano, the home of Cappellin. At the academy, he obtained the diploma of professor of architectural design and obtained an honorary degree from the Venice University Institute of Architecture of which he was director. 

In 1931, Scarpa's collaboration with Cappellin ended, following the bankruptcy of the company because it was not able to withstand the economic crisis linked to the Great Depression. But Scarpa did not go unnoticed by Paolo Venini — in 1933, the young designer became the new artistic director of the biggest glass company in Murano. 

Master glassmakers thought Scarpa's projects and sketches were impossible, but the passionate and curious designer always managed to get exactly what he wanted. Until 1947 he remained at the helm of Venini & Co., where he created some of the best known masterpieces of modern glassmaking. Scarpa’s work with Venini was characterized by the continuous research on the subject, the use of color and techniques that he revisited in a very personal way, and the development of new ways of working with master glassmakers. 

At the beginning of the 1930s, "bubble", "half filigree" and "submerged" glass appeared for the first time on the occasion of the Venice Biennale of 1934. A few years later, at the Biennale and the VI Triennale of Milan, Venini exhibited its lattimi and murrine romane pieces, which were born from a joint idea between Scarpa and Paolo Venini. 

In 1938 Scarpa increased production, diversifying the vases from "objects of use" to sculptural works of art. In the same year he laid the foundation for the famous "woven" glass collection, exhibited the following year. In the subsequent years, Scarpa–Venini continued to exhibit at the Biennale and in various other shows their the "black and red lacquers," the granulari and the incisi, produced in limited series, and the "Chinese," which was inspired by Asian porcelain

Scarpa's creations for Venini garnered an international response and were a great success, leaving forever an indelible mark on the history of glassmaking. The last Biennale in which Carlo Scarpa participated as artistic director of Venini was in 1942. He left the company five years later. 

The time that Scarpa spent in the most important glass factory in Murano would attach a great artistic legacy to the company. His techniques and styles were resumed in the postwar period under the guidance of Tobia Venini, Paolo's son. In the 1950s, after the departure of Scarpa, Fulvio Bianconi was the new visionary at the Biennials with Venini.

On 1stDibs, vintage Carlo Scarpa glass and lighting are for sale, including decorative objects, tables, chandeliers and more.

(Biography provided by Ophir Gallery Inc.)

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Creator: Carlo Scarpa
Carlo Scarpa Cornaro Armchair by Cassina
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Carlo Scarpa Cornaro Three Seater Sofa by Cassina
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Carlo Scarpa, 4 Poltrone da cinema in velluto rosso
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Firenze, IT
Set di 4 Poltroncine da cinema in velluto rosso, disegnate da Carlo Scarpa negli anni 60 per L’Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione a Roma, progettato da Marcello Piacentini.
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1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Pair of Cornaro Armchairs by Carlo Scarpa for Gavina, 1973 ( light wood version)
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Argelato, BO
Carlo Scarpa, Cornaro 140 armchair in ash wood, made for Gavina, Italy, 1973 This is one of the rarest and most fascinating versions of the famous sofa created by Carlo Scarpa, whic...
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1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Cornaro Armchair by Carlo Scarpa for Gavina, 1973 (Ash wood version)
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Argelato, BO
Carlo Scarpa, Cornaro 140 armchair in ash wood, made for Gavina, Italy, 1973 This is one of the rarest and most fascinating versions of the famous sofa created by Carlo Scarpa, whic...
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1970s Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Pair of Cornaro 140 Armchairs by Carlo Scarpa in Green Chenille Velvet
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Ozzano Dell'emilia, IT
Pair of Cornaro 140 armchairs designed by Carlo Scarpa. Solid hardwood structure (iroko). Polyurethane padding. Upholstery in original chenille velvet. The one-unit side and back cus...
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1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Set of 12 Red Velvet Carlo Scarpa Theatre Chairs, from the Auditorium Roma, 1960
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Rome, IT
An iconic set of 12 chairs designed by Carlo Scarpa for the Auditorium in Via della Conciliazione, Rome on a project by Architect Marcello Piacentini 1950 this set from the first a...
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Italy 1960 Carlo Scarpa Design Pair of Red Velvet Armchairs for Auditorium
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Brescia, IT
This is a set of Carlo Scarpa armachairs designed and realized for the Auditorium in Rome, project by the Italian architect Marcello Piacentini, bu...
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Mid-20th Century Italian Modern Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Italian Mid-Century White Fabric Wood Cornaro Armchair by Scarpa Gavina, 1970s
By Gavina, Carlo Scarpa
Located in MIlano, IT
Italian mid-century White fabric and wood Cornaro armchair by Scarpa for Gavina, 1970s Cornaro armchair with black painted solid wood structure. The ...
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1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Italy 1960 Carlo Scarpa Design Set 6 Red Velvet Armachairs for Auditorium
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Brescia, IT
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Cornaro two-seater sofa, designed by Carlo Scarpa and manufactured by Studio Simon in 1974. Made of Iroko wood, foam, and azure chenille velvet. Excellent vintage condition. Born in Venice on June 2nd, 1906, Carlo Scarpa began working very early. Only a year after he had first qualified as an architect in 1926, he began working for the Murano glassmakers Cappellin & Co. in a consultative capacity; from 1927, he began to experiment with the Murano glass, and this research not only gave him excellent results here but would also inform his progress for many years to come. Between 1935 and 1937, as he entered his thirties, Carlo Scarpa accepted his first important commission, the renovation of Venice’s Cà Foscari. He adapted the spaces of this stately University building which stands on the banks of the Grand Canal, creating rooms for the Dean’s offices and a new hall for academic ceremonies; Mario Sironi and Mario De Luigi were charged with doing the restoration work on the frescos. After 1945, Carlo Scarpa was constantly busy with new commissions, including various furnishings and designs for the renovation of Venice’s Hotel Bauer and designing a tall building in Padua and a residential area in Feltre, all worth mentioning. One of his key works, despite its relatively modest diminished proportions, was the first of many works which were to follow in the nineteen fifties: the [bookshop known as the] Padiglione del Libro, which stands in Venice’s Giardini di Castello and shows clearly Scarpa’s passion for the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the years which were to follow, after he had met the American architect, Scarpa repeated similar experiments on other occasions, as can be seen, in particular, in the sketches he drew up in 1953 for villa Zoppas in Conegliano, which show some of his most promising work. However, this work unfortunately never came to fruition. Carlo Scarpa later created three museum layouts to prove pivotal in how twentieth-century museums were set up from then on. Between 1955 and 1957, he completed extension work on Treviso’s Gipsoteca Canoviana [the museum that houses Canova’s sculptures] in Possagno, taking a similar experimental approach to the one he used for the Venezuelan Pavilion at [Venice’s] Giardini di Castello which he was building at the same time (1954-56). In Possagno Carlo Scarpa was to create one of his most incredible ever works, which inevitably bears comparison with two other museum layouts that he was working on over the same period, those of the Galleria Nazionale di Sicilia, housed in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo (1953-55) and at the Castelvecchio in Verona (1957- 1974), all of which were highly acclaimed, adding to his growing fame. Two other buildings, which are beautifully arranged in spatial terms, can be added to this long list of key works that were started and, in some cases, even completed during the nineteen fifties. After winning the Olivetti Award for architecture in 1956, Scarpa began work in Venice’s Piazza San Marco on an area destined to house products made by the Industrial manufacturers Ivrea. Over the same period (1959-1963), he also worked on renovating and restoring the gardens and ground floor of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, which many consider one of his greatest works. While he worked on-site at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Carlo Scarpa also began building a villa in Udine for the Veritti family. To shed some light on how much his work evolved over the years, it may be useful to compare this work with that of his very last building, villa Ottolenghi Bardolino, which was near completion at the time of his sudden death in 1978. Upon completion of villa Veritti over the next ten years, without ever letting up on his work on renovation and layouts, Scarpa accepted some highly challenging commissions which were to make the most of his formal skills, working on the Carlo Felice Theatre in Genoa as well as another theatre in Vicenza. Towards the end of this decade, in 1969, Rina Brion commissioned Carlo Scarpa to build the Brion Mausoleum in San Vito d’Altivole (Treviso), a piece he continued to work on right up until the moment of his death. Nevertheless, even though he was totally absorbed by work on this mausoleum, plenty of other episodes can offer some insight into the final years of his career. As work on the San Vito d’Altivole Mausoleum began to lessen in 1973, Carlo Scarpa started building the new headquarters for the Banca Popolare di Verona. He drew up plans that were surprisingly different from the work he carried out simultaneously on the villa Ottolenghi. However, the plans Carlo Scarpa drew up, at different times, for a monument in Brescia’s Piazza della Loggia commemorating victims of the terrorist attack on May 28th, 1974, make a sharp contrast to the work he carried out in Verona, almost as if there is a certain hesitation after so many mannered excesses. The same Pietas that informs his designs for the Piazza Della Loggia can also be seen in the presence of the water that flows through the Brion Mausoleum, almost as if to give a concrete manifestation of pity in this twentieth-century work of art. Carlo Scarpa has put together a highly sophisticated collection of structures occupying the mausoleum’s L-shaped space stretching across both sides of the old San Vito d’Altivole cemetery. A myriad of different forms and an equally large number of different pieces, all of which are separate and yet inextricably linked to form a chain that seems to offer no promise of continuity, arising out of these are those whose only justification for being there is to bear the warning “si vis vitam, para mortem,” [if you wish to experience life prepare for death] as if to tell a tale that suggests the circle of time, joining together the commemoration of the dead with a celebration of life. At the entrance of the Brion Mausoleum stand the “propylaea,” followed by a cloister that ends by a small chapel, with an arcosolium bearing the family sarcophagi, the central pavilion, held in place on broken cast iron supports, stands over a mirror-shaped stretch of water and occupies one end of the family’s burial space. The musical sound of the walkways, teamed with the luminosity of these harmoniously blended spaces, shows how, in keeping with his strong sense of vision, Carlo Scarpa could make the most of all his many skills to come up with this truly magnificent space. As well as an outstanding commitment to architectural work, with the many projects we have already seen punctuating his career, Carlo Scarpa also made many equally important forays into the world of applied arts. Between 1926 and 1931, he worked for the Murano glassmakers Cappellin, later taking what he had learned with him when he went to work for the glassmakers Venini from 1933 until the 1950s. The story of how he came to work on furniture design is different, however, and began with the furniture he designed to replace lost furnishings during his renovation of Cà Foscari. The later mass-produced furniture started differently, given that many pieces were originally one-off designs “made to measure.” Industrial manufacturing using these designs as prototypes came into being thanks to the continuity afforded him by Dino Gavina, who, as well as this, also invited Carlo Scarpa to become president of the company Gavina SpA, later to become SIMON, a company Gavina founded eight years on, in partnership with Maria Simoncini (whose own name accounts for the choice of company name). Carlo Scarpa and Gavina forged a strong bond in 1968 as they began to put various models of his into production for Simon, such as the “Doge” table, which also formed the basis for the “Sarpi” and “Florian” tables. In the early seventies, other tables that followed included “Valmarana,” “Quatour,” and “Orseolo.” While in 1974, they added a couch and armchair, “Cornaro,” to the collection and the “Toledo” bed...
Category

1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

Materials

Velvet, Foam, Chenille, Wood

Previously Available Items
Pair of Cornaro Armchairs by Carlo Scarpa for Gavina, 1973 ( light wood version)
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Argelato, BO
Carlo Scarpa, Cornaro 140 armchair in ash wood, made for Gavina, Italy, 1973 This is one of the rarest and most fascinating versions of the famous sofa created by Carlo Scarpa, whic...
Category

1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

Materials

Wood, Ash

Set of 2 Cornaro 140 Armchair by Carlo Scarpa
By Simon International, Carlo Scarpa
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Cornaro 140 armchair designed by Carlo Scarpa. Two pieces available. Ash wood structure, recently upholstered with linen velvet. Polyurethane padding. The one-unit side and back cushion is fastened to the frame corners. At the beginning of the ’70s Cornaro was born as an example of the Ultrarazionale style: a sofa with a solid hardwood structure, which makes this piece very powerful. Bibliography Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera, “Dino Gavina Ultrarazionale Ultramobile”, Editrice Compositori, Milano 1998, pp. 132, 133 Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia, “Dino Gavina, collezioni emblematiche del moderno dal 1950 al 1992”, Jaca Book, Milano 1992, p. 70 Virgilio Vercelloni, “L’ avventura del design: Gavina”, Jaca Book, Milano 1987, p. 93, images 61,62,63,64 “Carlo Scarpa Sandro Bagnoli Il design per Dino Gavina” edited by Sandro Bagnoli, Alba Di Lieto...
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1970s Italian Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Wood, Velvet

Set of 2 Cornaro 140 Armchair by Carlo Scarpa
Set of 2 Cornaro 140 Armchair by Carlo Scarpa
H 25.6 in W 55.12 in D 33.47 in
Carlo Scarpa Pair of Mod.618 Chairs
By Carlo Scarpa
Located in Naples, IT
618 is the chair designed by Carlo Scarpa for Meritalia. Carlo Scarpa's 618 chair combines pure functionalism with simple shapes. Originally designed in 1964. An armchair with ...
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1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Carlo Scarpa Armchairs

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Carlo Scarpa Pair of Mod.618 Chairs
Carlo Scarpa Pair of Mod.618 Chairs
H 30.71 in W 22.05 in D 20.87 in

Carlo Scarpa armchairs for sale on 1stDibs.

Carlo Scarpa armchairs are available for sale on 1stDibs. These distinctive items are frequently made of wood and are designed with extraordinary care. There are many options to choose from in our collection of Carlo Scarpa armchairs, although red editions of this piece are particularly popular. Many of the original armchairs by Carlo Scarpa were created in the mid-century modern style in italy during the 20th century. If you’re looking for additional options, many customers also consider armchairs by Claudio Salocchi, Giovanni Bassi, and Gustavo Pulitzer Finali.

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