Beetles & co.
The success of neoclassical inlay in Napoleonic Milan
Lombardy is today the undisputed home of furniture thanks to the cabinet-making companies, especially from Brianza, which developed in the 1900s, and to the impetus given to these companies by the designers that the whole world envies us. The Salone del Mobile is an international event that attracts millions of visitors to Milan every year.
Where does this tradition come from?
From 13 to 21 February, at the Cambiago headquarters of Di Mano in Mano, we tried to get to the origins of this success.
We are in the Napoleonic era, between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Throughout the world, decorative arts adapted to the taste of the new regime, the Empire style. The furniture is in mahogany, simple architecture with load-bearing columns and vast free fields where some gilded bronze can be placed on the most valuable pieces; this is the case from the Iberian peninsula to Russia. In Milan, however, there is a workshop that has fascinated with its pictorial inlays, virtuosity made with woods of different essences and colors to the point of setting a trend, as we would say today. It is the workshop of Giuseppe Maggiolini. Internationally renowned cabinetmaker to whom several exhibitions have been dedicated, including the one we organized in 2015 on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile. Maggiolini’s fame was such that in the Napoleonic era he continued to produce furniture inlaid with the motifs dear to him, the only example in the world. The demand for these furnishings is so widespread that several workshops of his students or followers develop these productions, starting a tradition of cabinetmaking that has laid the roots to the current development.
Here we will therefore present in a small exhibition itinerary a series of works, dressers, secretaires, desks and inlay paintings, from that Napoleonic period. Furnishings by Giuseppe Maggiolini but also by various lesser-known cabinetmakers. With this exhibition we want to begin to raise awareness of these productions, often confused with Maggiolini and thus give dignity to the history of these cabinetmakers.
A study that has highlighted many new details and discoveries. The most curious, that of a cabinetmaker, Luigi Mascaroni, very little known, of which we have revealed a panel which is located in one of the most evocative places of Bergamo art.
