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Tag: lux

Bonacina

Giovanni Bonacina started his business in 1889 in Lurago D’Erba, located in a hilly, fertile part of the area north of Milan known as Brianza, combining two traditional crafts practiced in the area, basketry and furniture making, using the local materials reed and cane, while rattan from Southeast Asia.

His hard work and experience produced excellent results, and his efforts were rewarded with awards in international expositions and numerous important commissions. His son Vittorio carried on and built upon what his father had passed down, taking the company yet another step forward, with an eye on the revolution in design and art that was taking place in the 1950’s, and a new era in the company’s future design, made possible by the winning combination of production experience, the visionary collaboration with talented designers, and a shared willingness to push the materials and shapes into new expressive forms.

Vittorio Bonacina and Co. distinguished itself again and again. Meanwhile Mario Bonacina, Vittorio’s son, was maturing as a designer and as an inspired heir to the family company’s name. With an assurance based on two generations of success he was uniquely placed to take the company towards the future by re-proposing selected historic pieces in updated ways and by continuing to work with important designers in innovative ways.

In step with the times, he emphasized the ecological sustainability of the materials used while carrying on the highly creative and refined work for which the company is known. Vittorio’s and Mario’s wives brought their skills, style and grace to the mix and established their invaluable place in the thriving company.

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Azucena

Azucena

Founded in 1947 by Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella and Corrado Corradi Dell’Acqua. The Italian brand Azucena has always stood out for its collections that combine formal elegance, luxury, pure and crisp aesthetics and a very high workmanship.
The brand that the architects decide to call Azucena from the gypsy name of the play ‘Il Trovatore’, is created both to collect some of their furniture projects to be used for the furnishing of the buildings they design themselves and to be able to individually produce some furniture that is part of a series of furnishings designed by them. The three designers then start a rich production designed by them to take advantage of a repertoire of furnishings available for the houses they design. They are furnishings, lamps and experimental objects, which boldly use new materials, combined with traditional ones in a surprising and contemporary way, combining and often overlapping industry and high craftsmanship. Lacquer, polished chromed brass, crystal are the preferred materials in a constant search for brightness, brilliance, and transparency, which sometimes alternate with the softness of the velvet or the richness of the leather.

With Azucena a unique, very refined collection comes to life, with a series of pieces that have become iconic in a short time, characterized by the union of different materials, but always sought after, and by the recovery of traditional stylistic forms; above all the Catilina armchair, almost a Roman throne, where you have to sit down in a composed way, a concept much loved by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni, but also the Cavalletto table, with sinuous and rigorous shapes, reminiscent of the drawing benches at the polytechnic of Milan, or the Chinotto armchair, a small off-scale not without irony.

The lamps have a privileged position within the Azucena collection: Luigi Caccia Dominioni pays particular attention to light and lighting fixtures, taking advantage of unusual materials and techniques in a new and modern way. The result is some models of extraordinary beauty such as the famous Imbuto floor lamp, with a clear reference reinterpreted in a sober and cultured way, or as the cast iron table lamp, where the name itself reveals the author’s technical choice, or even as the Monachella reading lamp, light, transportable thanks to a ring at the end of the rod, conceived by the architect Caccia Dominioni not casually, but inspired by the headdress of the nuns of a Milanese convent, which he was building.

In 2018, the Azucena brand was acquired by B&B Italia, which wanted to preserve and relaunch it, in an active vision of the Italian heritage, the historic brand returns to the market with a series of “modern classics” designed by the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni since the end of the 1940s. Chairs, sofas, tables and lamps that have written the history of Made in Italy design and which return today as a testimony to class and quality.

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