Cassina

About

Cassina is an Italian luxury furniture manufacturer based in Meda, in the Brianza district of Lombardy north of Milan. The company traces its origins to 1927, when brothers Cesare and Umberto Cassina established a woodworking business originally named "Amedeo Cassina". In its early decades the firm produced bespoke and small-batch furniture, including chairs, tables, sofas and beds. During the early 1950s, as demand grew, Cassina moved from handcraftsmanship toward serial industrial production, a shift that allowed it to collaborate with architects and designers on furniture intended for wider distribution. A defining part of Cassina's identity is its programme of design reissues. In 1964 the company launched the "Cassina I Maestri" (Cassina Masters) collection by acquiring the rights to furniture designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand. Cassina holds the exclusive worldwide licence to produce these Le Corbusier designs, working in direct connection with the Fondation Le Corbusier and the family of Charlotte Perriand. The collection later expanded to include works by Gerrit Rietveld, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franco Albini and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, among others. Through this programme, classic twentieth-century pieces remain in continuous authorised production rather than existing only as vintage originals. Among the best-known Le Corbusier furniture in the range are the LC2 armchair and the LC4 chaise longue, both originally conceived in 1928 by Le Corbusier together with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand. The LC2 is a club chair in which loose cushions sit within an exposed tubular-steel frame, while the LC4 is an adjustable chaise longue whose curved body rests on a separate steel base, allowing the angle of recline to be changed. These two pieces are frequently cited as reference points for modern Le Corbusier furniture and are widely reproduced, which has made authenticity and licensing a recurring topic among buyers. Alongside the historical reissues, Cassina developed its "Cassina I Contemporanei" line of original designs by contemporary architects and designers. Several of these have become reference designs in their own right. The Maralunga sofa, designed by Vico Magistretti in 1973, features a backrest that folds from a high to a low position, and it received a Compasso d'Oro award. The Cab chair, designed by Mario Bellini in 1977, uses a tubular-steel skeleton fully enclosed in saddle-stitched leather fastened with zips, and it entered the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Feltri armchair, designed by Gaetano Pesce in 1987, is made from thick felt stiffened with resin. The Utrecht armchair, designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1935, rounds out a catalogue that combines design sofas, armchairs, tables and storage with historical and contemporary authorship. Over time the company's ownership has changed while its production has remained in Italy. In 2005 Cassina was purchased by the Poltrona Frau Group, the Italian high-end furniture group later renamed Lifestyle Design. That group is owned by Haworth Inc., a privately held contract-furniture company based in the United States, and it brings together several Italian and international brands under one corporate structure. Cassina itself acquired the Italian brand Zanotta in 2023. Cassina sells through its own network of monobrand stores, authorised dealers and design retailers, as well as a contract division that supplies furniture for hospitality and workplace projects. Its products are positioned in the upper segment of the market: new editions of pieces such as the Maralunga sofa and the LC chaise longues are priced in the thousands of euros, reflecting the brand's emphasis on design authorship, licensed reissues and Italian manufacturing. For an audience searching for Italian luxury furniture, Le Corbusier furniture or design sofas, Cassina is one of the principal names associated with both historical twentieth-century reissues and contemporary Italian design.