Reale

Who knows what Carlo Mollino would have been capable of today, with access to carbon fibres or other composite materials, if in the 1950s he was able to create, using only solid wood and capable artisans, slender, lean and slim structures, equalled only in the contemporaneous constructions of Franco Albini, and the lightened struts of his Veliero bookshelf? Articulate and complex shapes, but which once understood can astonish owing to the constructive intelligence of a perfect mechanism where every element slots together, matching, twinlike with precision to the others, through precise (and custom-design) metal joint systems. True masterpieces, like the Reale table, created with a compact, transparent skeleton embellished with a crystal top that seems to frame it.