While working under the polymath Gio Ponti — arguably the most important figure in 20th-century Italian modernism — furniture designer Franco Albini nurtured a love for modern forms combined with traditional craft techniques.
Albini is widely known for working with organic materials such as rattan and cane for his chairs and other seating, but he also played a pivotal role in the Italian rationalist movement of the early 20th century, which saw architects and furniture makers applying a strict emphasis on geometry in their work. Rationalists drew on Ancient Roman architecture but rejected ornament, much in the way that Le Corbusier and celebrated Bauhaus figures such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had in their modernist furniture.
Albini received his degree in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1929, and, in 1931, he founded his practice in Milan, where he tackled workers’ housing and other reconstruction projects. A gifted urban planner, he also developed the Palazzo Bianco, Palazzo Rosso and Tesoro di San Lorenzo museums in Genoa. While Albini is revered for his Margherita chair — a Triennale Milano award winner created for Bonacina in 1951 — he also collaborated with manufacturers Poggi and Cassina in the 1940s on seating, tables and more that embodied his artistic vision. Of that mid-century work, the one piece that perhaps best captures this vision is the iconic Luisa chair.
With its cherry red upholstery and sinuous wooden legs that seem to float aboveground, the Luisa is a genuine masterpiece. It is also a testament to Albini’s perfectionism, as it endured several prototypes — including one made by Knoll in the late 1940s — and took approximately 15 years to design. Poggi launched the final version of the armchair in 1955, earning Albini the prestigious Compasso d’Oro from Italy’s Association for Industrial Design. It is produced today by Cassina. Albini named the chair for someone who likely saw the process firsthand: his personal secretary of two decades, Luisa Colombini.
Find vintage Franco Albini furniture on 1stDibs.
Franco Albini for Knoll 'Albini' Desk
By Franco Albini, Florence Knoll
Located in Waalwijk, NL
Franco Albini for Knoll International, 'Albini' desk, lacquered ash, glass, chromed steel, United States, design 1928, later production Franco Albini’s desk is defined by a restrain...
Steel, Chrome
$8,609 / item
Franco Albini Cavalletto Desk Table For Cassina
By Franco Albini
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Franco Albini Cavalletto Desk Table For Cassina The geometric lines of the Cavalletto desk elicit a pleasant feeling of lightness through its ‘by the ...
Walnut
Early Franco Albini for Knoll Model '80' Desk
By Knoll, Franco Albini
Located in Waalwijk, NL
Franco Albini for Knoll, model 80, glass, lacquered wood, lacquered steel, Italy, 1949 Franco Albini’s model 80 desk combines glass, steel and wood which resu...
Chrome
Franco Albini Table 840 Stadera Wood and Steel by Cassina
By Cassina, Franco Albini
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1954. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table/writing desk, designed by Franco Albini consists of two trapezoidal planes, one smaller than th...
Steel
Franco Albini TL22 wooden desk by Poggi Pavia, Italy, 1950s
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Chiavari, Liguria
Desk with shaped top from the "TL 22" series, wooden structure, italian manufacture from the 1950s, crafted by Poggi and designed by Franco Albini. This office desk stands out with ...
Wood
Franco Albini Cavalletto Table for Cassina, Italy, new
By Cassina, Franco Albini
Located in Berlin, DE
Available in Canaletto Walnut, natural ash and black stained ash. Prices vary dependent on the chosen material/finish. Table designed by Franco Albini in 1950. Relaunched in 2008. ...
Metal
Franco Albini Cavalletto Table, Black Stained Wood by Cassina
By Cassina, Franco Albini
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1950. Relaunched in 2008. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table, with its minimal lines and an extremely light look, underscores the extens...
Metal
Franco Albini, center desk with dark wood drawers
By Franco Albini
Located in Milano, IT
COD-2669 Franco Albini (1905-1977) Center desk with dark wood drawers, polished steel square tube leg and tempered glass top. Registered drawing from 1958. Knoll international ma...
Metal
Franco Albini 840 Stadera Wood and Steel Table for Cassina, Italy, new
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Berlin, DE
Prices vary dependent on the model/finish of the table. Table designed by Franco Albini in 1954. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table/writing desk, designed by Franco Albin...
Steel
Mid-Century Stadera Desk Model 840 by Franco Albini for Poggi, Italy, 1950s
By Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Mid-Century Modern Stadera Desk Model 840 by Franco Albini for Poggi, Italy, 1950s
Wood
Desk Model No. 80, Franco Albini
By Franco Albini
Located in Los angeles, CA
Desk Model No. 80
Steel
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto Desk/Dining Table by Franco Albini for Poggi
By Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi, 1950s.
Wood
Rare Mahogany 'TL2' Cavalletto Table / Desk by Franco Albini for Poggi, Italy
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in London, GB
A rare mahogany version of the Cavaletto or TL2 table designed by the great neo-rationalist designer, Franco Albini. Designed in 1950 for manufacturers Poggi...
Steel
Franco Albini Cavalletto Table, Black Stained Wood by Cassina
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1950. Relaunched in 2008. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table, with its minimal lines and an extremely light look, underscores the extens...
Metal
$8,609 / item
Franco Albini Cavalletto Table, Wood by Cassina
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1950. Relaunched in 2008. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table, with its minimal lines and an extremely light look, underscores the ext...
Metal
Franco Albini Table 840 Stadera Wood and Steel by Cassina
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1954. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. This table/writing desk, designed by Franco Albini consists of two trapezoidal planes, one smaller than th...
Steel
Cavalletto Dining or Working Table by Franco Albini for Poggi
By Franco Albini, Poggi
Located in Barcelona, ES
Cavalletto or TL2 dining or working table designed in 1950 by italian architect Franco Albini, old Poggi edition. Wood construction with beveled edges tabletop and crossed legs with ...
Metal
Franco Albini for Knoll - Chrome glass and black wood Desk
By Knoll, Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Designed by Franco Albini in 1928, the Albini Desk is an iconic example of early modernist design, known for its clarity, structural balance, and refined material palette. The desk c...
Chrome
Franco Albini "T22" Desk for Poggi, 1958
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Lonigo, Veneto
Franco Albini "T22" Desk for Poggi, wood, Italy, 1958 Designed in 1958, the “T22” desk is one of Franco Albini’s rarest and most sophisticated works for Poggi. Characterized by its ...
Wood
Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table Model TL-22 produced by Poggi
By Franco Albini
Located in Barcelona, ES
Franco Albini & Franca Helg. Dining table model no. TL22. Manufactured by Poggi, Italy, 1958. Mahogany. Measurements: 180.3 cm x 104.1 cm x 73 H cm. 70.98 in x 40.98 in x 28.74 in. Literature: Giuliana Gramigna, Repertorio 1950/1980, Milan, 1985, p. 123. Franco Albini, was born in 1905 and died in 1977. He spent his childhood and part of his youth in Robbiate in Brianza, where he was born. Albini, as an adolescent moved with his family to Milan. Here he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic and graduated in 1929. He started his professional activity in the studio of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, with whom he collaborated for three years. At the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona (where Gio Ponti curated the Italian pavilion and Mies van der Rohe realized that of Germany) and in Paris where, as Franca Helg recounted, he had the opportunity to visit the studio by Le Corbusier. In those three years, the works he carried out are admittedly of the twentieth century imprint. It is the meeting with Edoardo Persico that marked a clear turning point towards rationalism and the approach to the group of editors of "Casabella". The partly ironic and partly very harsh comments of the Neapolitan critic to a series of drawings, made by Albini for the design of some office furniture, caused him a great disturbance. “I spent days of real anguish - Albini recalls - I had to answer all the questions. I also had a fever, a large and long fever. " The meted provoked Albini to openen a professional studio in via Panizza with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti. The group of architects began to deal with public housing by participating in the competition for the Baracca district in San Siro in 1932 and then building the IFACP neighborhoods: Fabio Filzi (1936/38), Gabriele D'Annunzio and Ettore Ponti (1939). During this period, Albini also worked on his first villa (Pestarini), which Giuseppe Pagano, architect and critic of the time, presented as follows: “This coherence, which the superficial rhetoric of fashionable jugglers calls intransigence, and which is instead the basis of understood between the fantasy of art and the reality of the craft, in Franco Albini, it is so rooted that it transforms theory into a moral attitude ". But it is above all in the context of the exhibitions that the Milanese master experienced his compromise between that "rigor and poetic fantasy" of which Pagano speaks, coining the elements that became a recurring theme in his . The opening in 1933 of the new Triennale headquarters in Milan, in the Palazzo dell'Arte, was an important opportunity to express the strong innovative character of rationalist thinking, a gym in which to freely experiment with new materials and new solutions, but above all a "method". "Cultivated as a communication laboratory, the art of setting up was for the rationalists of the first generation what the perspective had been for the architects of humanism: the field open to a hypothesis of space that needed profound reflections before landing the concreteness of the construction site ". Together with Giancarlo Palanti, Albini on the occasion of the V Triennale di Milano set up the steel structure house (with R. Camus, G. Mazzoleni, G. Minoletti and with the coordination of G. Pagano), for which he also designed the 'furniture. At the following Triennale of 1936, Persico dided, together with a group of young designers gathered by Pagano in the previous edition of 1933, Franco Albini took care of the preparations of the home exhibition. The setting up of Stanza per un uomo, at that same Triennale, allows us to understand the acute and ironic approach of Albini, as a man and as a designer: "Celebrating the beauty of mechanics was the imperative to which, for example, the surprising displays by Franco Albini who managed, in the subtle way of a refined and rarefied style, to sublimate their practical content in the metaphysics of daring still lifes: flying objects which marked in the void refined frames and metal intricacies the nodes of a fantastic cartography where industry finally became art free from purpose ". That same year Albini and Romano designed the exhibition of the Ancient Italian Goldsmithery: vertical uprights, simple linear rods, designed the space. A theme, of the "flagpole", seemed to be the center of the evolution of production and the creative process. The concept is reworked over time, with the technique of decomposition and recomposition typical of Albinian design: in the preparation of the Scipione Exhibition and contemporary drawings (1941) the tapered flagpoles, on which the paintings and display cases were hung, are supported by a grid of steel cables; in the Vanzetti stand (1942) they take the V-shape; in the Olivetti shop in Paris (1956) the polished mahogany uprights support the shelves for the display of typewriters and calculators. The flagpole is found, however, also in other areas. In the apartments he designed, it is used as a pivot on which the paintings can be suspended and rotated to allow different points of view, but at the same time as an element capable of dividing the spaces. The Veliero bookcase...
Mahogany
$16,200 / set
Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, 1958, Set of 2
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Lonigo, Veneto
Franco Albini "T22" Desks for Poggi, wood, Italy, 1958, set of 2 Designed in 1958, the “T22” desks are among the rarest and most refined creations by Franco Albini for Poggi. Define...
Wood
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi
By Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi, 1950s
Wood
$1,403 / item
H 31.5 in W 15.75 in D 16.15 in
Franco Albini Cicognino Wood Side Table for Cassina, Italy, new
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Berlin, DE
Prices vary dependent on the material of the table. Available in Canaletto Walnut, Natural Ash, Black Stained Ash or Amaranth stained ash. Side table designed by Franco Albini in 1...
Wood
$4,350
H 29 in W 75.75 in D 35 in
1960s Mid Century Walnut and Chrome Executive Desk by Florence Knoll
By Florence Knoll
Located in North Hollywood, CA
Mid-Century Walnut and Chrome Desk by Florence Knoll Elevate your workspace with this iconic mid-century walnut desk, designed and manufactured by Florence Knoll. Featuring a beauti...
Chrome
$2,994Sale Price / item|42% Off
H 29.53 in W 70.87 in D 33.47 in
Franco Albini TL3 Dining Table for Cassina, Glass & Wood, Italy, 2023
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Berlin, DE
Prices vary dependent on the size and chosen material of the table. The base is available in solid ash wood or American walnut. The table is available in a rectangular or round version (the latter measures 130 cm in diameter and 75 cm in height) Table designed by Franco Albini in 1953. Relaunched in 2013. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. Franco Albini designed this table using the strut element that he had already employed in the design of the Veliero and Infinito bookshelves. In this instance, the legs serve as the vertical elements, solid, turned along their entire surface except for the square section onto which the horizontal table...
Glass, Wood, Ash, Walnut
$11,112
H 28.75 in W 40.95 in D 70.87 in
Franco Albini Mahogany mid-centry Italian Table Model TL-22 produced by Poggi
By Franco Albini
Located in Barcelona, ES
Franco Albini & Franca Helg. Dining table model no. TL22. Manufactured by Poggi, Italy, 1958. Mahogany. Measurements: 180.3 cm x 104.1 cm x 73 H cm. 70.98 in x 40.98 in x 28.74 in. Literature: Giuliana Gramigna, Repertorio 1950/1980, Milan, 1985, p. 123. Franco Albini, was born in 1905 and died in 1977. He spent his childhood and part of his youth in Robbiate in Brianza, where he was born. Albini, as an adolescent moved with his family to Milan. Here he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic and graduated in 1929. He started his professional activity in the studio of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, with whom he collaborated for three years. At the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona (where Gio Ponti curated the Italian pavilion and Mies van der Rohe realized that of Germany) and in Paris where, as Franca Helg recounted, he had the opportunity to visit the studio by Le Corbusier. In those three years, the works he carried out are admittedly of the twentieth century imprint. It is the meeting with Edoardo Persico that marked a clear turning point towards rationalism and the approach to the group of editors of "Casabella". The partly ironic and partly very harsh comments of the Neapolitan critic to a series of drawings, made by Albini for the design of some office furniture, caused him a great disturbance. “I spent days of real anguish - Albini recalls - I had to answer all the questions. I also had a fever, a large and long fever. " The meted provoked Albini to openen a professional studio in via Panizza with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti. The group of architects began to deal with public housing by participating in the competition for the Baracca district in San Siro in 1932 and then building the IFACP neighborhoods: Fabio Filzi (1936/38), Gabriele D'Annunzio and Ettore Ponti (1939). During this period, Albini also worked on his first villa (Pestarini), which Giuseppe Pagano, architect and critic of the time, presented as follows: “This coherence, which the superficial rhetoric of fashionable jugglers calls intransigence, and which is instead the basis of understood between the fantasy of art and the reality of the craft, in Franco Albini, it is so rooted that it transforms theory into a moral attitude ". But it is above all in the context of the exhibitions that the Milanese master experienced his compromise between that "rigor and poetic fantasy" of which Pagano speaks, coining the elements that became a recurring theme in his . The opening in 1933 of the new Triennale headquarters in Milan, in the Palazzo dell'Arte, was an important opportunity to express the strong innovative character of rationalist thinking, a gym in which to freely experiment with new materials and new solutions, but above all a "method". "Cultivated as a communication laboratory, the art of setting up was for the rationalists of the first generation what the perspective had been for the architects of humanism: the field open to a hypothesis of space that needed profound reflections before landing the concreteness of the construction site ". Together with Giancarlo Palanti, Albini on the occasion of the V Triennale di Milano set up the steel structure house (with R. Camus, G. Mazzoleni, G. Minoletti and with the coordination of G. Pagano), for which he also designed the 'furniture. At the following Triennale of 1936, Persico dided, together with a group of young designers gathered by Pagano in the previous edition of 1933, Franco Albini took care of the preparations of the home exhibition. The setting up of Stanza per un uomo, at that same Triennale, allows us to understand the acute and ironic approach of Albini, as a man and as a designer: "Celebrating the beauty of mechanics was the imperative to which, for example, the surprising displays by Franco Albini who managed, in the subtle way of a refined and rarefied style, to sublimate their practical content in the metaphysics of daring still lifes: flying objects which marked in the void refined frames and metal intricacies the nodes of a fantastic cartography where industry finally became art free from purpose ". That same year Albini and Romano designed the exhibition of the Ancient Italian Goldsmithery: vertical uprights, simple linear rods, designed the space. A theme, of the "flagpole", seemed to be the center of the evolution of production and the creative process. The concept is reworked over time, with the technique of decomposition and recomposition typical of Albinian design: in the preparation of the Scipione Exhibition and contemporary drawings (1941) the tapered flagpoles, on which the paintings and display cases were hung, are supported by a grid of steel cables; in the Vanzetti stand (1942) they take the V-shape; in the Olivetti shop in Paris (1956) the polished mahogany uprights support the shelves for the display of typewriters and calculators. The flagpole is found, however, also in other areas. In the apartments he designed, it is used as a pivot on which the paintings can be suspended and rotated to allow different points of view, but at the same time as an element capable of dividing the spaces. The Veliero bookcase...
Mahogany
$3,977
H 27.17 in W 26.38 in D 18.51 in
Wooden bar trolley ''CR20'' by Franco Albini for Poggi, Italy, 1958
By Franco Albini
Located in Argelato, BO
Rare "CR20" trolley in rosewood designed by the famous Italian architect and designer Franco Albini for the Poggi company, Italy. it is an authentic icon of style, which perfectly ...
Wood
Classic Midcentury Walnut and Chrome Florence Knoll Desk Knoll
By Florence Knoll, Knoll
Located in Buffalo, NY
Classic midcentury walnut and chrome Florence Knoll desk features richly grained walnut top chromed steel frame, pencil drawer and file drawer. Retains early Knoll label.
Chrome
Franco Albini, center desk with dark wood drawers
By Franco Albini
Located in Milano, IT
COD-2669 Franco Albini (1905-1977) Center desk with dark wood drawers, polished steel square tube leg and tempered glass top. Registered drawing from 1958. Knoll international ma...
Metal
Dining Table by Franco Albini
By Franco Albini
Located in Shibuya-ku, 13
Italian architect and designer FRANCO ALBINI's spherical ottomans made of wicker and bamboo are his signature products, and many of you have probably seen them before. His use of org...
Wood, Teak
$5,263 / item
H 29.93 in W 70.87 in D 29.93 in
Franco Albini Tl3 Table, Black Dyed Wood and Glass by Cassina
By Franco Albini, Cassina
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Table designed by Franco Albini in 1953. Relaunched in 2013. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. Franco Albini designed this table using the strut element that he had already employed in the design of the Veliero and Infinito bookshelves. In this instance, the legs serve as the vertical elements, solid, turned along their entire surface except for the square section onto which the horizontal table...
Glass, Wood
Table by Franco Albini
By Succ. Carlo Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Berlin, DE
The Italian architect and designer Franco Albini designed this table, model ‘TL3’, for Carlo Poggi, Pavia, in 1953. The table features beautiful details; the frame is made of solid t...
Teak, Plywood
A large wooden desk or table from franco Albini. Italy 60's
Located in VILLERS-SUR-MER, FR
An attractive all-wood desk with oak veneer top and solid oak legs. Italian work, 70's.
Rosewood
20th Century, Franco Albini for Poggi Wooden Cart mod. CR-20
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Turin, Turin
Franco Albini (1905-1977) lived in Milan where he stuied Architecture at the Politecnico. He started his career at Gio Ponti's studio, with whom he collaborated before getting in tou...
Wood
Franco Albini for Knoll Post Modern Desk
By Knoll, Franco Albini
Located in Waalwijk, NL
Franco Albini for Knoll, Albini desk 1928, glass, wood and chromed steel, Italy, design from 1949 Franco Albini’s 1928 desk combines glass, ...
Chrome
Franco Albini's Mini Desk for Knoll 1970's
By Franco Albini, Knoll
Located in Milano, Lombardia
The writing table designed by Franco Albini for Knoll consists of a chromed steel frame, a black-stained oak drawer unit that has two drawers on one side and a compartment on the oth...
Chrome
Rare early desk N80 by Franco Albini
By Franco Albini
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Magnificent desk model N80 by the designer Franco Albini, rare first editions model with white lacquered metal base and wooden box. The dimensions are slightly larger than the model ...
Metal
20th Century, Franco Albini per Poggi Wooden Desk mod. T22, 50s
By Franco Albini, Poggi
Located in Turin, Turin
Franco Albini (1905-1977) lived in Milan where he stuied Architecture at the Politecnico. He started his career at Gio Ponti's studio, with whom he collaborated before getting in tou...
Wood
Franco Albini TL2 Cavalletto table Poggi Italy 1950
By Franco Albini
Located in Roosendaal, Noord Brabant
Iconic and early example of the TL2 'Cavalletto' table designed by Franco Albini and manufactured by Poggi in Italy around 1950. The table has an amazing dynamic and archtectural sha...
Brass
Sold
H 27.56 in W 70.87 in D 27.96 in
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi
By Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Mid-Century Modern TL2 Cavalletto desk/dining table by Franco Albini for Poggi, 1950s
Wood
Sold
H 27.56 in W 46.26 in D 26.38 in
Desk "1928" by Franco Albini for Knoll International, Italy, 1950s
By Franco Albini
Located in Greding, DE
Desk "1928" designed by Franco Albini for Knoll International, Italy, 1950s. This glass and metal desk features a veneered white drawer element an...
Metal
Franco Albini Cavalletto Table for Poggi, Italy
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Rivoli, IT
This table, with its minimal lines and an extremely light look, underscores the extensive thought, by Franco Albini, and the advanced wood-working skills, by Poggi, that went into it...
Wood
Franco Albini for Poggi Table or Desk, Italy, 1960s
By Poggi, Franco Albini
Located in Almelo, NL
Franco Albini Table or Desk for Poggi, Italy, 1960s This walnut table or desk, model T22, was designed by Franco Albini for Poggi in Italy during the 1960s. It is in excellent condi...
Wood, Walnut
Sold
H 28.75 in W 77.96 in D 40.16 in
20th Century Franco Albini for Poggi Large Desk mod. T22 in Wood, 50s
By Franco Albini, Poggi
Located in Turin, Turin
Franco Albini (1905-1977) lived in Milan where he stuied Architecture at the Politecnico. He started his career at Gio Ponti's studio, with whom he collaborated before getting in tou...
Wood
Franco Albini for Poggi Model 840 Stadera Desk
By Franco Albini, Poggi
Located in Milano, IT
Rare and important desk model Stadera designed by Franco Albini for the Poggi manufacture, in 1959. Model 840. Made of noble wood for its shelf, the desk is the perfect modernist ele...
Metal
Mid-Century Modern Desk Table by Franco Albini, Italy, 1950s
By Franco Albini
Located in Brussels, BE
Mid-Century Modern desk table by Franco Albini, Italy, 1950s.
Wood