Set of 5 vintage Kentucky dining chairs by Carlo Scarpa for Bernini, 1977

Set of 5 mod. 783 "Kentucky" dining chairs, designed by Carlo Scarpa for the Italian manufacturer Bernini in 1977. Structure made from oak and walnut timber. Seats and backrest made from cognac leather. Excellent vintage condition. Carlo Scarpa designed this chair for the "Scuderia" series., the last project he made for Bernini. The architect took inspiration from the "shaker" movement. He designed the chair slightly inclined at the front. This feature allows you to swing backward (until you lean on a wall) and remain in balance. Born in Venice on June 2nd, 1906, Carlo Scarpa began working at a very early age. A year after he had first qualified as an architect in 1926, he began working for the Murano glassmakers Cappellin & Co. in a consultative capacity. From 1927, Carlo Scarpa began to experiment with the Murano glass, and this research not only gave him excellent results here but would also inform his progress for many years to come. Between 1935 and 1937, as he entered his thirties, Carlo Scarpa accepted his first important commission, the renovation of Venice’s Cà Foscari. He adapted the spaces of this stately University building that stands on the Grand Canal banks, creating rooms for the Dean’s offices and a new hall for academic ceremonies; Mario Sironi and Mario De Luigi were charged with doing the restoration work on the frescos. After 1945, Carlo Scarpa found himself constantly busy with new commissions, including various furnishings and designs for the renovation of Venice’s Hotel Bauer and designing a tall building in Padua and a residential area in Feltre, all worth mentioning. One of his key works, despite its relatively modest diminished proportions, was the bookshop known as the Padiglione del Libro, which stands in Venice’s Giardini di Castello and clearly shows Scarpa’s passion for the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the years which were to follow, after he had met the American architect, Scarpa repeated similar experiments on other occasions, as can be seen, in particular, in the sketches he drew up in 1953 for villa Zoppas in Conegliano, which show some of his most promising work. However, this work unfortunately never came to fruition. Carlo Scarpa later created three museum layouts to prove pivotal in terms of how twentieth-century museums were set up from then on. Between 1955 and 1957, he completed extension work on Treviso’s Gipsoteca Canoviana the museum that houses Canova’s sculptures in Possagno, taking a similar experimental approach to the one he used for the Venezuelan Pavilion at Venice’s Giardini di Castello which he was building at the same time (1954-56). In Possagno Carlo Scarpa was to create one of his most significant ever works, which inevitably bears comparison with two other museum layouts that he was working on over the same period, those of: - Galleria Nazionale di Sicilia, housed in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo (1953-55) - Castelvecchio in Verona (1957- 1974), all of which were highly acclaimed, adding to his growing fame.