Pair of tables in gilded bronze and malachite

The two ancient malachite tops were reused and mounted on two specially made-to-measure bronze structures.

A similar table also furnishes the veranda of Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, designed by the architect Tomaso Buzzi, active for the family since 1938 for about twenty years. On this occasion Buzzi was called to intervene in the modernization of the external parts and furnishings of some rooms of the villa, built only a few years earlier on a project by Piero Portaluppi. Buzzi’s contribution served to soften Portaluppi’s rationalist and squared-off architecture with his characteristic style inspired by eighteenth-century forms; among the areas involved there was also the veranda. The coffee table was in fact inserted by Buzzi, made by re-adapting an older top, lacquered in red and decorated with chinoiserie, mounted inside a bronze structure worked with laurel leaves. Our pair of coffee tables is very similar, consisting of an identical structure in gilded bronze, with a high quality fusion, specially made to measure to adapt it to the two ancient malachite tops.

It is plausible to hypothesize that the design can be traced back to an original idea by Buzzi, who for the table takes up typically neoclassical forms and ornamental motifs, reworking them according to contemporary taste.

A similar coffee table in the structure recently went up for auction, presented as a work attributable to the Maison Baguès.