GIO PONTI'S 1950 custom designed executive desk sold for $106,000 in March, far higher than the preauction estimate of $45,000.

Iconic Iconoclast
Credit for this renewed interest in Ponti’s work goes in part to Brian Kish, a New York dealer in modern Italian design, who organized Gio Ponti: A Metaphysical World, the first retrospective of the designer’s work, at New York’s Queens Museum of Art in 2001. A year later, London’s Design Museum held a retrospective of its own. Both shows revealed to a new audience not just Ponti’s creative brilliance, but his protean nature. He was at turns a classicist, a modernist and a post-modernist. Ponti altered his style according to the medium, project and circumstance. While some see this as his genius, it has also hurt his reputation. By defying easy definitions, Ponti’s work challenges collectors and critics, who are more comfortable with easily labeled designers.

PONTI'S 1953 upholstered brass and walnut bench, $21,000.

Unlike most early modernists, Ponti did not want to dispense with the past. He believed a new design language could be formulated through the synthesis of tradition and industrial logic. In his own work, he strove for a design patois that was light, transparent and poetic. His 1957 Superleggera chair serves as an icon for this ambition. An inspired work of rational minimalism, light enough to lift with a finger, it is based on the rush-seated wooden chairs made by craftsmen in the seaside town of Chiavari. Ponti called it a “chair-chair” because, like a Platonic ideal, it had been reduced to its pure essence. These design landmarks are still produced in volume and, thus, are relatively inexpensive. Fred Silberman, a New York dealer, is selling a set of eight original Leggera chairs from the early 1950s, out of which the “superlight” version evolved, for a mere $12,500. The versions now being manufactured by Cassina sell for $1,250 each.

It is Ponti’s single commission and small-edition pieces from the postwar period that are currently garnering the highest prices. “Anything that Ponti made for the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Milan Triennales [in 1947, 1950 and 1953] is prized,” says Peter Loughrey, the director of Los Angeles Modern Auctions. “The pieces from those fairs demonstrate Ponti at the peak of his creativity in the decorative arts.” Also sought after from that era are the furnishings he designed with the eccentric artist Piero Fornasetti. In addition to custom pieces for wealthy Milanese clients, the two created surrealistic suites for the Andrea Doria, one of four Italian ships whose interiors Ponti renovated. Among their most famous collaborations are two flamboyant bedroom suites designed for the Ninth Milan Triennale in 1950, encompassing a wardrobe and bed featuring a wing-like headboard with built-in reading lamps and floating side cabinets decorated with constructivist abstractions.

“His work has such a playful spirit and always a graceful line. It’s time people start paying attention to him again.”

If these bed sets came to market, they would fetch at least $200,000, says Loughrey. But Ponti fans can only dream. They are currently part of the Swiss gallerist Bruno Bishofberger’s furniture collection. Indeed, the design aristocracy has recently developed quite a crush on this Italian master. “People in the visual arts immediately get his aesthetic,” observes Loughrey. San Francisco art collector Michael Boyd owns several Ponti pieces. Connie Caplan, named as one of the world’s top 200 art collectors in 2003 by Art News, is an avid Ponti buyer. New York contemporary art dealer Brent Sikkema has dispensed with his collection of French modern furnishings in order to assemble works by the Italians. Loughrey believes the avant garde-cum-kitsch nature of much of Ponti’s work is what so appeals to the art crowd. Some of it is simply out there, especially his work with Fornasetti.

VALUE JUDGMENT  Italian designer Gio Ponti is becoming increasingly well known as his work in the fields of architecture, ceramics, textiles, furniture, industrial design, set design and painting attract a growing number of enthusiasts. Furniture and furnishings designed by Ponti in the 1950s and 1960s have auctioned in recent years for many times their presale estimates. Work from earlier in his career, from the 1930s and 1940s, is also rising in value, but may be had for more reasonable sums. Furnishings and textiles designed by Ponti are readily available for modest prices, but may also appreciate in value.

Last spring Loughrey co-curated a show of Ponti’s furniture from the mid to late 1950s with modern and contemporary paintings at the Acme Gallery in Los Angeles to demonstrate the lively dialogue between Ponti’s designs and the art. Among the attractions were a Ponti-designed wall unit with a backboard of old woodcut motifs by Fornasetti for $150,000, and a long, oval-shaped Brazilian rosewood dining table with twin sculpted-wood pedestals for $22,000.

The furniture Ponti designed in the 1930s and early 1940s is also rising in value. Eugenio Montale of Pegaso International, a Los Angeles shop dealing in vintage modern, is selling a glass, rosewood, burlwood and bronze vanity from the 1930s for $18,500. Montale is always on the lookout for designs Ponti did in the 1940s for Fontana Arte, a lighting and glass company Ponti founded in 1932. “The mirrors, chandeliers and mirrored furniture are absolutely fantastic,” Montale says. “They are always in demand.”

Ponti began his career in 1923 as the creative director of the prestigious Italian ceramics company Richard Ginori, and prices for the limited-edition pieces he produced during his years there can fetch up to $35,000. Spectacular one-of-a-kind items, particularly hand-painted majolicas (tin-glazed earthenware), may sell for $100,000. Also rare and highly valued are the glass pieces Ponti designed for Venini, the fabled Murano-based glass company, founded by Ponti’s childhood friend. Between 1946 and 1947, Ponti served as the company’s art director. It was Ponti who introduced pure, intense colors to the firm’s glassware. Kish is selling a very rare glass sculpture Ponti designed for Venini in 1966 for $12,000.

Available Artifacts
While some prices are skyrocketing, other Ponti creations have, so far, remained in the mid-market range. According to New York dealer John Beckmann, it is possible to acquire Ponti’s more widely produced designs for Richard Ginori starting at $1,000. His own online design resource, Muse XX, offers an architectural 1956 silver candelabra Ponti conceived for Christofle for $3,000. Pegaso International has for sale a pair of custom-made egg chairs that Ponti designed in the 1950s for $7,500. Pieces from his “diffusion” lines continue to be widely available. A small, circular walnut table with brass feet designed by Ponti for Singer & Sons in 1958 sold for $2,140 at Wright’s auction in March.

Ponti’s vintage textiles remain easily obtainable, as well. While unique commissioned fabrics sell for $6,000 to $8,000 a yard, mass-produced textiles can be purchased for as little as $250 a yard. Yet another way of enjoying Ponti is through his architectural drawings, which may be had for between $4,000 and $6,000. Higher prices are commanded by significant drawings, such as the initial sketch of Ponti’s architectural masterwork, the Pirelli Tower in Milan, for which Kish is currently asking $8,000. In Milan, it is also possible to find drawings for his theater designs for a few thousand dollars each.

Some of Ponti’s contemporaries are also attracting the interest of collectors. There are excellent examples of furnishings by Franco Albini, Ico Parisi and Carlo di Carli on the market. And these continue to be attractively priced. A lounge chair designed by Parisi for Cassina, which won the Compasso d’Oro prize in 1955, sold for $2,700 at Wright’s spring auction. Montale is selling a small desk of rosewood and mahogany with a parchment top by di Carli for $3,800 and a stylish rosewood bar by Parisi for $4,500.

However, Albini’s handsome PL 19 upholstered lounge chair for Poggi from 1957 did not sell at the Wright auction, despite a modest estimate of $3,000 to $4,000. And a sale of Ponti’s work at Sotheby’s in December 2003 was disappointing. These fluctuations in demand have some market watchers dubious about the strength of the current Ponti frenzy, and of the potential of modern Italian design to close the gap with the French in reputation and value. James Zemaitis, an expert in Sotheby’s 20th Century Decorative Arts Department, believes modern French design remains a more solid investment. “There is no ceiling to prices for works by Prouvé, Perriand, Mouille and Noll,” he says.

Many dealers in Italian design, however, insist that this is the beginning of a boom market that will turn blue chip, rather than a bubble primed to burst. “I think [Zemaitis] is off the mark,” says Kish. “Except for great designers like Perriand and Prouvé, the French designers are in the tradition of the great ébénistes. The Italians are in a different category, as they were primarily architects engaged in furniture design of a unique intellectual caliber, which is still with us in today’s design.” What’s more, argues Kish, as good French pieces become increasingly scarce, it is the work of Italian designers that is showing up in the windows of the top Parisian dealers. “So who knows, in 10 years, where prices for Italian modern will be?”