Gio Ponti Italian Walnut Wardrobe with Horizontal Striped Veneer, Italy, 1930s

The wardrobe reads as a sequence of horizontal bands: the entire carcase, both front and sides, is veneered in walnut in a tight rhythm of lighter and darker stripes that runs without interruption across the doors and wraps around the corners. Below, two curved feet, shaped like small sled-like supports and grooved with dark inlaid lines, lift the body. On the front, two small turned wooden knobs and a lock with a key mark the only visible point of articulation, leaving the striped surface as the dominant image.

The structure is in walnut, with veneers chosen to alternate strips of lighter and darker tone, obtained from different cuts and selections of the same species. The sequence is uniform across all visible faces, including the sides. The knobs are in turned wood; the internal hinges in brass. The feet bear dark inlaid lines, a solution consistent with the graphic logic of the piece. The interior is laid out in two halves: on the left a compartment for hanging clothes with a horizontal rail on turned supports, on the right a series of curved shelves with a concave profile.

The piece is by Gio Ponti, referable to his production of the 1930s. In those years Ponti was developing an Italian bourgeois idea of furniture that he would document in the pages of Domus, in parallel with his art direction at Richard-Ginori and the design of fittings for the great Italian liners. The horizontal striping of the veneer, achieved by juxtaposing different tones of the same species, is a graphic solution recurring in Ponti's vocabulary and among the architects close to the Novecento movement. The dark inlaid lines on the feet and the small turned knobs confirm the language of the decade.

The piece has undergone a conservative restoration and is fully original in all its elements. The veneer is intact across its full extent and shows the uniform patina of a surface that has never been stripped. The knobs and the hardware are the original ones, as are the hanging rail, its turned supports and the curved interior shelves. The original key is present and the lock is in working order.

Dimensions: Height 174.5 cm (68.7 in) x Width 115.5 cm (45.5 in) x Depth 56 cm (22.0 in)