Cassina S.p. A. is an Italian manufacturing company specialised in the creation of high-end
designer furniture.[1]
Origins
The "Amedeo Cassina" company was created by the brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina in 1927 in
Meda,
Brianza, (Northern
Italy).[2] After the war, Cassina continued to expand in size and fame, with products which covered a broad range of furniture including: chairs, armchairs, tables, sofas and beds.[3]
History
The company's transformation was bolstered further by commissions for cruise ships,[4][5] top end hotels and restaurants which accounted for a great part of the company's activity right up to the mid-sixties and beyond.[6]
In 1964 the "Cassina I Maestri" (Cassina Masters) Collection was born, with the acquisition of the rights to products designed by
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, the most important names of 20th century design. These included the LC1, LC2,[7][8][9][10] and LC3 armchairs,[11] and the LC4 chaise longue. Today Cassina is the exclusive worldwide licensee of the Le Corbusier designs.[12]
The "Cassina I Maestri" collection was widened in 1968 with the acquisition from Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin of reproduction rights to some of the Bauhaus objects and in 1971 the designs of
Gerrit Rietveld,
Frank Lloyd Wright, and of
Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1972.[13] The Masters collection continued with the re-issue in 1983 of furniture by Erik Gunner Asplund, the acquisition from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation of rights of reproduction (1986) of furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright, including the Barrel chair (1937), and, finally, in 2004 furniture by
Charlotte Perriand.[14]
The 1972, the New York MoMA exhibition, "Italy: the New Domestic Landscape" curated by
Emilio Ambasz was co-sponsored Cassina.[15] In 2005 Cassina was purchased by the Poltrona Frau Group.[16]