The Department that organises design auctions was born from the twenty-year experience of Cambi Casa d'Aste's experts with the intent to propose to enthusiasts and collectors objects belonging to the sphere of modern and contemporary design.
Since 2013, the year of Piermaria Scagliola's arrival, the Department began to propose biannual sales appointments dedicated exclusively to design, auctions that alternate between Genoa and Milan and that have consecrated Cambi Auction House as the leader in Italy for the design sector.
Cambi's design auctions offer a careful selection of rare design artworks, or first-time-on-the-market design pieces, furniture and furnishings, lighting, glass, masterpieces signed by the most famous masters of Italian and international design. The boundaries of art, craftsmanship and design blur in the pieces proposed by the Department; design represents a category of art increasingly searched and appreciated by young collectors, often the ones dealing with cross-collecting of artworks.
Among the names of Italian and international design masters frequently presented by our design auction catalogues are great designers such as Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Max Ingrand, Pietro Chiesa, Paolo Buffa, Carlo Scarpa, Gio Ponti, Gino Sarfatti, Ignazio Gardella, Carlo de Carli, Marco Zanuso, Dube, BBPR, Archizoom, Angelo Lelli, Gabriella Crespi, Osvaldo Borsani, Pietro Fornasetti, Alessandro Mendini, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Ettore Sottsass, Ingo Mauer, Pierre Jeanneret and famous brands such as Stilnovo, Fontana Arte, Tecno, Arredoluce.
Italian design, in particular, is increasingly appreciated on the art market, as evidenced by our past auctions, increasingly followed by a prepared and demanding clientele. Rare, unpublished or uncommon design pieces are increasingly reasearched, as are the timeless design artworks that are often included in our monographic sales.
The design pieces we present in our auctions combine beauty and usefulness of use with an innate ability to thrill and excite, furniture and unique pieces that narrate in a unique way the creativity and inspiration, vision and life of those who conceived them. But not only that, design leaves its mark thanks to its creative urgency and is often a witness to the customs of an era, to the everyday life of the past.
Complex and simple at the same time, often experimental, the artworks created by revolutionary architects and designers of the Twentieth Century have been spectators of the lives of those who have chosen to surround themselves with art and design, revolutionizing, today as yesterday, their vision and style.
The Department of Design boasts the world record for auction adjudications of a work by Gio Ponti, with the sale of a pair of chests of drawers that together totaled €681,500, from the rooms of Casa Lucano, known as Casa di Fantasia, whose furnishings were auctioned in March 2019 in association with Phillips of London. The previous record, also held by Cambi, dates back to 2015 for the adjudication of a 1930 low table signed by Giò Ponti, sold for €387,000.
Other important adjudications include works such as a closet with wooden structure and brass details signed Osvaldo Borsani and Lucio Fontana sold for €162,600, a closet made by Lucio Fontana and Osvaldo Borsani sold for €187,000 and the Bazaar sofa by Superstudio sold for €156,350.
Would you like to receive a free valuation for a design piece in your possession? Ask our experts for a free quotation for the artworks you wish to sell at auction. Selling design with Cambi Aste is easy, fast, safe and profitable.