ManufacturerItalian
Cassina
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In the small town of Meda, tucked into the Brianza district north of Milan, brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina opened a cabinetmaking workshop in 1927 under their father's name. The company spent its early decades producing bespoke furniture for ocean liners, luxury hotels, and high-end restaurants - commissions that built the craft standards the brand would later export to the world. By the late 1940s, Cassina had begun a relationship with architect Gio Ponti that would reshape its ambitions entirely.
The partnership with Ponti produced the Superleggera chair in 1957, the result of years of iterative refinement. Weighing just 1.7 kilograms with legs shaved down to an 18-millimetre triangular section, the chair became a benchmark for structural economy in postwar Italian design. Cassina's transition from artisan workshop to industrial manufacturer accelerated through the 1950s and 1960s as the company began separating its design and production functions, inviting outside architects to propose ideas the factory would then realise at scale.
The decade of the 1960s brought a succession of influential collaborations. Vico Magistretti joined in the early part of the decade, contributing the Carimate chair in 1963. In 1964 Cassina secured the production rights to furniture by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, establishing the I Maestri collection - a programme of authorised reissues produced in close collaboration with estates and foundations. The collection expanded steadily: Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright were added in 1971, Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1972, and Erik Gunnar Asplund in 1983. Officially launched to the public in 1973, I Maestri became one of the most carefully curated reissue programmes in furniture history, distinguishing Cassina from competitors producing unlicensed reproductions.
Mario Bellini's CAB chair of 1977, a leather-clad steel frame whose upholstery zips on like a skin, joined a catalogue that also included Magistretti's Maralunga sofa of 1973 - a piece whose independently adjustable headrests won the Compasso d'Oro in 1979. These objects defined a particular strain of Italian modernism: technically inventive, formally restrained, and built to last decades rather than seasons. Piero Lissoni began a long-running collaboration in 1994, extending the company's reach into softer, more domestic idioms, followed by Patricia Urquiola whose work brought a more tactile, experimental character to the range.
In 2005, Cassina was acquired by the Poltrona Frau Group, which was itself purchased by US office furniture company Haworth in 2014 for approximately $270 million USD. Operating under the Haworth Lifestyle umbrella since 2025, Cassina continues production in Meda. On the Nordic auction market, the company's pieces appear regularly at Stockholms Auktionsverk and Bukowskis, with the strongest results coming from I Maestri pieces and early Gio Ponti armchairs. Across 36 indexed items on Auctionist, chairs and armchairs represent the dominant category, reflecting the depth of Cassina's seating catalogue and the sustained collector interest in its mid-century production.