Roberto Pamio Renato Toso for Stilwood Grid Bookcase Ash and Black Lacquer 70s

Roberto Pamio and Renato Toso formed one of the most prolific design partnerships to emerge from the Veneto region in the late 1960s, working across glass for Leucos and furniture for Stilwood. This bookcase belongs to their Stilwood production of the early 1970s, the same period that produced the duo’s better-known Lara sofa, and marks their shift from the rounded, Space Age vocabulary of the previous decade toward the orthogonal, architectural grids that would come to define early Italian postmodernism.

The piece is built as a modular grid: horizontal shelves in natural ash run between vertical dividers that alternate, without fixed rhythm, between natural ash and black-lacquered ash, with one solid lacquered panel set into the upper register as a visual counterweight to the open compartments. The wood grain remains visible through the black finish, confirming a lacquer or stain over solid ash rather than an opaque laminate skin. At 218.5 x 37 x 218.5 cm, the unit reads as a near-square volume, equally suited to free-standing display or use as a room divider.