Gallotti & Radice

Gallotti&Radice is the company that more than any other has tied its name to crystal glass in furniture: tables, consoles, bookcases and cabinets in sheets of clear glass, a material that is both fragile and extremely strong. According to the company, it was the first in Italy, from the early 1960s, to study and use crystal glass in furniture.

A glass workshop

In 1956 Pierangelo Gallotti and Luigi Radice, sharing a passion for glass, opened an art workshop devoted to decorating it. Their first works were lamps, furnishing objects and mirrors, all one-off pieces made by hand. To grow, the two partners enrolled at the school of art applied to industry at Milan's Castello Sforzesco, where they studied technical drawing and decoration: this is how the workshop became Gallotti&Radice.

Adam and the joint

The turning point came in 1971, when the architect Luigi Massoni asked the company for a table for the Christmas display in the window of Mobilia, then Milan's leading design shop. The result was Adam, the first table made entirely of crystal glass, light and transparent: an unexpected success. For the display of a Brionvega shop in Rome, came the Tris set of tables, joining a horizontal and a vertical sheet of glass with a steel joint: the joint shows off its elegance while hiding the actual fixing system, and became a hallmark of many later products. In 1970 the company had taken part in its first trade fair, in Japan.

Gallotti&Radice today

In the 1980s and 1990s Pierangelo Gallotti designed the new headquarters with Luigi Massoni, and leadership passed to the second generation: today the company is run by Silvia and Massimo Gallotti and Marco Radice. In 2008 it presented Air, a crystal-glass office collection that became its best-selling product; the catalogue has since grown to include upholstery, beds and lamps. Everything is made in Italy, combining an industrial line with water-jet cutting and tempering of the sheets with craft work for custom pieces.

Sources

• Gallotti&Radice – Azienda