Gio Ponti Rationalist Daybed for Giordano Chiesa, 1948

Design
1948

Manufacture
1940-1949

Location
Lonigo, IT

Gio Ponti Rationalist Daybed for Giordano Chiesa, wood and velvet, Italy, 1948

This daybed is built on two matching end frames in wood, each formed as an open square lattice rising to the same height and closed with a gently rounded finial at the top corner. The legs taper from a wide top to a narrow foot, giving the piece a light, upright stance despite its solid construction. The mattress cushion and two bolsters are upholstered in a soft beige velvet finished with dark piping along every seam, a graphic counterpoint to the warm tone of the wood frame.

Gio Ponti designed this daybed for the Milanese workshop of Giordano Chiesa, with whom he collaborated on furniture production through the 1930s and into the postwar years. The trellis-like grid of the end panels is a motif Ponti returned to repeatedly in this period, applying it across chairs, cabinets and beds as a way to lighten and open up an otherwise solid wood volume. Here it plays the same role on both ends, turning the frame into a pair of airy, almost architectural screens, while the tapered legs and rounded corner details point to the more linear, restrained furniture language Ponti was developing for Milanese interiors of the late 1940s. Produced by Giordano Chiesa in Italy, the daybed reflects this transitional moment in Ponti's output, poised between prewar structure and postwar lightness.