Franco Albini was one of the most important people in Italian design: a pioneer of new formal and aesthetic sensibilities. The son of an engineer, he received his degree in architecture in 1929 at Milan Polytechnic. While travelling around Europe, he met and associated with masters such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He soon came into contact with the Casabella circle (in 1932 he met Edoardo Persico), which at that time played a crucial role in Italian Rationalist architecture. Albini worked as both architect and designer throughout his career, particularly focusing on furniture design. His clean lines created minimalist shapes which merged the very essence of the elements used with suggestions of poetic, dream-like worlds. The objects which Albini designed for Richard-Ginori are ‘pieces’ in their own right, with their own intrinsic, secret souls: they are real, yet they transcend reality. They are ‘traces of stories’ which bring their symbolic and functional value into living spaces.

VASO A COSTE ALTO - 017 6167 16863 - h cm 40 - inch 15 3/4

VASO A COSTE BASSO - 017 6168 16863 - h cm 20 - inch 8