Modernist French Walnut Sideboard by André Arbus, 1960s

Italian architect-designer Paolo Buffa (1903-1970) was active between the 1930s and 1960s. He is known for an array of furniture designs that marry Neoclassical and Art Deco motifs with modernist principles. His pieces rarely include identifying marks, making them difficult to authenticate.

Born and raised in Milan, Buffa studied architecture at the city’s famous Politecnico, graduating in 1927. The following year, he established a design studio with Antonio Cassi Ramelli, whom he had met during a brief stint working in the atelier of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia. Together they made their professional debut with a dining room installation at the 1930 Triennale. Sometime between the 1933 and 1936 Triennales, Buffa opened his own studio.

Designing for the Milanese upper classes in the 1930s, Buffa’s designs were expertly handmade in fine materials, resulting in a quality that of rivaled French Art Deco legend Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann. In collaboration with talented ébénistes—like Mario Quarti—and specialized craftsmen, Buffa was able to slowly introduce modernized, streamlined techniques in the early 1940s, which allowed the designer to increase his output. The evolution of Buffa’s increasingly modern aesthetic is clear, from early Neoclassical cabinets with intricate ornamentation and opulent inlays, to '60s-era, pared down lounge chairs and consoles. In the 1960s, the designer collaborated with large-scale Italian manufacturer Cassina.

In addition to furniture design, Buffa presided over many architectural and interior design projects, which ranged from the design of tombs—his first commission—and a yacht for Egyptian royalty, to villas, hotels, opera houses, and offices.

Despite Buffa’s prolificity and his significant contribution to the development of midcentury Italian design culture, relatively little has been written about the designer since his death in 1970. Nevertheless, the appetite for Buffa designs on the vintage market is growing. Design enthusiasts and collectors alike value Buffa’s designs as much for their high-quality craftsmanship and materials as for their classic aesthetic and association with the foundation of the modernist movement in Italy.

French furniture designer, sculptor, and architect André Arbus was born into a family of cabinetmakers in Toulouse in 1903. He worked in his father’s workshop while studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse. After graduating, he became artistic director of the family business. In 1925, he began actively presenting his furniture designs in a variety of creative salons and galleries—including the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, and the gallery L’Epoque in Paris—and quickly established a reputation as an innovative furniture designer. In 1932, Arbus moved to Paris, where he advocated a return to French tradition and quality. Inspired by French Classicism, his refined pieces embrace an economy of line as well as, often, luxurious materials such as lacquer, parchment, vellum, and fine wood veneers. He opened his own gallery in Paris in 1935.

In 1939, he exhibited work at the New York World’s Fair (designing the French sections at the Expo in New York and in San Francisco) and was commissioned to do the interiors of the French Ministry of Agriculture. From 1946 onwards, he exhibited widely and worked on a variety of interior design projects and objects, including a series of glass chandelier and light collaborations with the Parisian company Veronese, a variety of sea liner interiors, and a commission for the decoration of the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. (1955). During the 1950s, Arbus turned his attention towards sculpture and began to create unique sculptural furniture objects. His first bronze pieces appeared in 1952, and sculpture remained his primary focus until his death in 1969.

Born in Paris in 1879, designer Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (who was also known, confusingly, as Émile Jacques Ruhlmann) was born into an Alsatian family who owned a painting and contracting firm. He spent much of his youth learning the family trade. In 1907, upon his father’s death, the seventeen-year-old Ruhlmann took over the family business. Around 1910, he exhibited his furniture publicly for the first time, and in 1912, he established his own workshop in Paris. In 1919, he founded an interior design company with designer and friend Pierre Laurent known as Établissement Ruhlmann et Laurent. Together, they produced furniture, wallpaper, fabric, lighting, and bronze objects.

While the Arts and Crafts movement influenced Ruhlmann’s earlier work, he is best known as a luminary of 1920s French Art Deco style. Over time, however, his style became more functional and modern, and occasionally even modular. Ruhlmann himself did not work with his hands; prior to 1923, when he set up his own cabinetmaking shop, all of his designs were produced by outside shops. Especially notable works include a variety of glamorous furniture pieces made of rare woods like Brazilian rosewood and Makassar ebony, often embellished with ivory or tortoiseshell details.

Ruhlmann’s designs were purchased both in France and abroad to decorate palaces, political estates, and national museums, including the furnishings for several rooms in the Élysée Palace as well as pieces for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Today, his work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.

Ruhlmann died in Paris in 1933 at the age of 54.