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A limited edition of the Dezza armchair by Gio Ponti to celebrate 60th anniversary of this iconic design.
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Dezza — Gio Ponti
Poltrona Frau
01 Hand with gold symbol and flowered hand – 1935.
© Gio Ponti Archives / Archivio storico
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02 The witch's hand and bowl with barbed key – 1935.
Courtesy Gio Ponti Archives
© Gio Ponti Heirs Historical Archive
05 Letter to Lisa – 1952.
© Salvatore Licitra-Gio Ponti Archives
06 Gio Ponti Disegna mani (Gio Ponti Designs hands)
circa 1970. Courtesy Gio Ponti Archives
© Gio Ponti Heirs Historical Archive
09 Design for the ‘Nuvole sono immagini’
(Clouds are Images) lectures – 1967.
© Salvatore Licitra-Gio Ponti Archives
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We find beautiful ceramic hands as early as the 1920s when young Ponti,
recently returned from serving in the first world war, invented the idea that
a ceramic hand, impractical and symbolic as it was, could relaunch the art
of ceramics, raising the profile of the powerful but dormant Richard Ginori
company, and awakening it from its traditional ways. 01 02
The hand, in the instant perception that a visual symbol possess,
shifts our level of perception.
In the blink of an eye, we move from alertness to functionality, albeit ornate
and elegant, to the pure and theatrical play of symbols, where the protagonists
are our fantasy and imagination. Ponti's hand represents the human ability to
imagine, to go beyond the world of objects to enter those of theatre, poetry
and playfulness.
Indeed, a world that can hold closely together, the multifaceted
creative expressions of our hero.
The drawn hand may indeed have small dimensions, such as
those of a letter, or of the decoration/narrative of the 26 hands
we have chosen for this edition of the Dezza armchair, because
the drawing is a narration, a fairy tale. 05 06 09
