The avodire wood prototype was the first piece of modern furniture produced by Molteni. Its special construction involves a simple three-fork joint.
Never made on an industrial scale, in 1955 it won Cantù’s first “Mostra Selettiva – Concorso Internazionale del Mobile”, which was designed to requalify the image of Italian furniture manufacturing. The jury was made up of Gio Ponti, Alvar Aalto, Romano Barocchi, Carlo De Carli and Finn Juhl. “We wanted to highlight the simplicity of the skeleton right down to the joints and to show (to use a rather bold word) the art of jointing. A minimum of material and construction (system) creates a maximum of dimensions and proportions (typologies).” Werner Blaser.
Awards
1955 Selettiva di Cantù, 1st Prize for complete furnishing
Born in 1924 and a student of Alvar Aalto, Blaser studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and in Japan. He opened his own studio in Basle in 1959 and for a long time worked with Mies van der Rohe, publishing various books about the latter’s architecture.
His chest of drawer won the Cantù "Prima mostra selettiva - Concorso internazionale del mobile", a competion designed to re-qualify the image of Italian furniture making. The jury included Gio Ponti, Alvar Aalto, Romano Barocchi, Carlo De Carli and Finn Juhl.
"I travelled widely in Japan and the details reflect the influence of that world. And since the competition was anonymous, the jury presumed that I was a Japanese designer, while I was actually from Basel!”.
Werner Blaser
