The mood around the showroom was lifted earlier this week when interior designer (and friend) Michael Rabatin wrote to tell us how the Gino Vanni Orchidea (GV1149) round dining table had become a new favorite of his. After specifying similar versions of this beautiful round Italian dining table both in his own Manhattan apartment and for a client’s Vermont vacation home, he was speaking from firsthand experience when he commented that after using his table for more than eight months, “it holds up to great abuse…cleans easily and still looks great! This is the new black dress of the dining room!”
Like all of our tables, the Orchidea table is made to order, in Italy, to client specifications — in this case by our largest-selling supplier, located just south of Verona in the Veneto region. Shown here with a high-gloss black lacquer finish, the table is perfectly at home in the more modern setting of Michael’s New York apartment.
Displaying its versatility, below the table takes on an entirely different look: shown in the Texas home of another client, the natural wood finish and pairing with wood-backed chairs steers the table (and look of the room) in a much more traditional direction.
Orchidea Italian table in a more classical setting
And finally, with a floral inlay left unstained, the version of the table we have here in our Minneapolis showroom offers yet another personality.
Orchidea Italian table with wood inlay top
At home in a wide variety of settings and functions, it’s not hard to see why Michael compared this table to one of the most versatile of women’s wardrobe items. And for that — and for clients making it our most popular table — we say thank you.
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of working with two different clients — one a designer, the other not — as the connector & enabler in a long-distance collaboration between client and Italian craftsman. For these two projects, the client came to us with a challenge: make something “like this” — generally a photo of something else they’d seen that for one reason or another wasn’t quite right.
Having visited our suppliers in Italy on multiple occasions, I knew that the “this” was well within their skills and abilities, and helped translate from the clients’ vision into our supplier’s production lexicon.
Collaborating on new pieces of Italian furniture like this — which happens over a distance of more than 4000 miles — adds an extra level of complexity, so at each stage we’re here to make sure the furniture designers & builders get the information they need; and we make sure the clients get the sketches, drawings, and samples they need to ensure that things are proceeding according to their vision.
Pre-production sample of new client inlay
As these pieces come to fruition, we’ll have more to share. In the meantime, it’s fun to know that we’re able to make dreams like this a reality for our clients.
“How long will it take to get our new table?” is generally one of the first questions clients ask us once they’re ready to order a new Italian dining table. The short/easy answer is usually “around 12-16 weeks”. But the real answer is something I’ve had the chance to reflect on a lot this week, as clients have prodded me for more information on tables they’re waiting to see in their homes — and as I had to turn away a prospective client who wanted a table in less than 14 days. The real answer is the story of the birth and journey of a new Italian dining table…
At ItalyByWeb, we have no inventory. Zero. Everything we sell is made-to-order — in Italy, by Italian crafts-men and -women (most of whom have been practicing their craft for decades). So when a client orders a new table, it’s not waiting in a large warehouse somewhere just waiting to get plopped on a truck. At best, raw components of a table — like the pedestal or legs — might be ready to become part of a new table. But then again, perhaps that table is nothing more than an idea or concept in the client’s head, waiting to be sketched, cut and carved into the structure of something entirely new (as in two recent collaborations we’ve worked on with clients and our Italian suppliers).
After weeks of building (which may include specially designed inlays/marquetry), staining and finishing (which may include hand applying gold or silver leaf), only then is the table ready to begin its journey across the ocean. To make sure that journey is the cargo-equivalent of a comfortable one, requires finding the right carrier, the shortest path, and the most reliable handlers at both ends (and these days that might also include time spent wending its way through the extra scrutiny of customs/homeland security). Once that table has finally spent several more weeks migrating across an ocean, and is almost ready to begin its new life in the New World, it still needs loving handlers to take it the last mile to the client’s home (with white-glove delivery/installation).
Each of these steps takes time, careful planning, and caring attention. After those several weeks of asking/hoping for patience, once a freshly minted Italian dining table takes its proud place in a client’s home, the most we can hope is that the client appreciates that it was worth the wait.
One of my favorite events of the year is the annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile, taking place next week in Milan. It’s a truly overwhelming display of Italian furniture, with over 1200 exhibitors (the great majority of which are Italian), and close to 300,000 visitors spread out over more than 3 million square feet of exhibition space.
As the invitations have already been piling up on my desk to see the latest collections from suppliers old and new, I thought today would be a good day to preview a few of the things that caught my attention.
After the show, I’m sure we’ll have more to share. In the meantime, enjoy!
Now that I’m finally sifting through some of the photos and videos from my last trip to Italy, it seemed like a good time to share a bit more about one of the wonderful Italian family businesses with whom we work…
Tucked in the Tuscan hills in the region around the Era river (Val d’Era) — and only a few kilometers from the most important Italian marble quarries of Carrara and Siena — is the one of the small artisan Italian furniture producers I found on our ongoing quest to bring the undiscovered gems of Italy to an American audience: Valdera Export.
Valdera Export was established by brothers Luciano and Silvano Lenzi in 1970, with the straightforward goal of offering the best possible service in support of beautiful, uniquely Italian, hand-made Italian marble tables. For over four decades now they’ve been doing just that, while simultaneously raising the next generation of the Lenzis into the family craft/business: operations are now run by Luciano’s daughter Claudia; production is led by his son Simone.
Luciano Lenzi hand cutting marble for a table
Starting from the marble slab, to the lacquering, polishing, packaging, and crowning with the company’s Certificate of Authenticity (for a table entirely Made in Italy) — every aspect of crafting their Italian marble tables is done under one roof, under the watchful eye and hand of the Lenzi family (and an extended group of craftsmen who are treated like family). And even forty-plus years on, on two different visits to Valdera (in 2009 and 2012), I found Silvano and Luciano both still hard at work demonstrating their skills as the company’s most experienced marble cutters.
Simone and Claudia
When I asked Claudia about her goals, now that the second generation of the Lenzi family has taken the helm of Valdera, she said she’d like to give the marble table — a product with centuries of history — a thoroughly modern place in interior design. To that end, she mentioned the active collaboration they’ve had in recent years with renowned Italian designer Giorgio Soressi. And I can tell you that Soressi’s artful table designs definitely set Valdera’s tables apart at both of the Milan international furniture exhibitions I attended.
As Claudia likes to remind me each time we plan a new custom marble table for a client, each stone (and by extension, each table), is a product of nature. And one of the pleasures of owning a marble table is the reminder it serves of the incredible forces at work within the earth, and its embodiment of this “unique part of Italian heritage, millions of years in the making.”
Any client casually perusing our website can easily recognize that we can deliver on our promise to bring beautiful, classic Italian furniture to an American audience — affordably and with great customer service. What’s perhaps less apparent is what it means to have furniture lovingly made-to-order, just for you, by craftsmen in generations old family businesses in Italy. So let me tell the quick story of this pretty pink dining chair:
A client of ours who originally found us online while searching for dining tables with inlays (something we definitely specialize in), wanted to find some nice dining chairs to go the table she purchased from us. Working with my very talented colleague Jennifer, the client settled on a chair style quite similar to the Louis XVI frame shown here. But because she couldn’t find exactly her perfect fabric among the supplier’s Italian collection, we encouraged her to look look around locally and find something she liked better. She did, and we ordered the specified fabric for her; when it arrived in our showroom, we forwarded it on to Italy to be upholstered onto her new chairs.
As her chairs were getting upholstered, the value of personal attention to each piece became apparent: the supplier let us know that they were not happy with the feel of the wood on some of the chairs, and rather then hold things up to produce the chair frames again, asked if the client would be happy with the almost-identical frame shown above (which is generally more expensive, but would be substituted at no extra cost). She was; and production continued.
When the chairs were finally ready to be loaded on a container for their journey across the ocean, the value of craftspeople taking pride in their work became apparent: they had wanted to show off their handiwork and had therefore sent us this picture of a finished chair ready to load in Italy (which we then shared with the customer). When the client saw the photo, however, she instantly noticed that we had neglected to specify the desired tufting on the chair back. So we had the chairs unpacked, tufted, repacked, and ready to load the very next day.
The personal connection at every step of the way: your furniture, how you want it, made-to-order just for you in Italy. That’s what we’re here for.
To some people, the words “Italian design” conjure classical images — handcrafted wood furniture, accented in gold and produced using traditional techniques employed for generations; to others, the same words conjure images of the ultra-modern — modern fashion, modern styling, and modern materials. At ItalyByWeb, we try hard to find interesting and unique furniture to suit both of these very different expectations; every so often, we’re able to find something that touches on both.
At the last Salone Internazionale del Mobile (International Furniture Fair) in Milan, I discovered a fun new product line that we’ve finally begun to display in our showroom, and are also in the process of rolling out on the website.
The two colorful tables shown below have been turning heads for several days now in our showroom window, and are my personal favorites from the line of coated metal gems from Officina Nove. I visited their production facility in Tuscany last month, and really loved their story: the company got its start producing metal components for a true icon of Italian design, the Vespa. Recently they took their decades of experience working metal for that and other industrial applications, and partnered with several Italian designers and architects to create a beautiful line of modern furniture & accessories.
These side tables — like many of the pieces in the collection — are made of powder coated aluminum (making them suitable for indoor or outdoor use). And they’re available in a staggering 190 different colors! So you can easily add a splash (or two) of color in most any setting.
After a brief stop in Paris to see the Maison+Objet home show, I was fortunate enough to spend last week touring/meeting/spending time with several of our best suppliers Italy. I saw a ton of great furniture (more to share soon), and was greeted everywhere by incredible hospitality.
One of the things that struck me often — beyond the beauty of the furniture itself — was the sense of family and tradition. In the photos below, as just one example, you can see gold left being applied to hand-built, white lacquered dressers. I was mesmerized by the speed and agility with which this centuries old craft was being carried out — one piece at a time, by hand. But I was even more blown away when I was told that is was the mother of the current company’s president whose gifted workmanship I was watching.
Like the seventy year old founder who I’d observed cutting marble at a different supplier just the day before, here was another example the whole family involved in carrying on generations of traditional Italian furniture making.
While I’m sure there’s also much to appreciate in a fully mechanized, automated furniture factory, for me watching “mama” do this delicate work by hand was really one of the special moments from the trip.
Valdera Export, our hand-picked producer of modern Italian marble dining room tables, is nestled in the Tuscan hills, not far from Pisa. Driving up to their facility on my last visit there, I was struck not only by the beauty of Tuscany, but also the beauty of the natural stone itself. Seeing so much stone in one place was a great reminder that like a snowflake, each piece of marble is unique, and tells its own story of time, place, and natural formation. As Valdera states right on their warranty, “Each piece is slightly different and will show slightly different veining. Part of the pleasure of owning a marble table is that is is unique to you.”
This diversity extends to color: while Italy’s famous white Carrara marble is often the first thing to come to mind when thinking about Italian marble tables, while at Valdera I was able to see shades of browns, blacks, reds, greens, pinks, and more. The variety seems limited only by where one chooses to quarry.
Anyway, one the things Claudia (daughter of the founder, shown at right above) first showed me about their tables is that they don’t have the cold feeling we inherently associate with stone. Valdera treats their tables with a special lacquer finish which not only protects the table — marble is naturally quite porous, and susceptible to staining — but also renders it warm to the touch.
I was reminded of all this today for two reasons: first, I am headed back to visit Valdera later this month (and must remember to bring some marshmallows, something they enjoy but can’t get in Italy); and second, because we recently got a commission for a marble & wood kitchen table, an application for which this kind of warmth was quite desirable. For that special kitchen table we brought our top wood & marble producers together in a collaborative effort, to create the perfect custom table for our client’s home.
On the next-to-the-last day of the year (and a quiet day here in the showroom), it seemed like a good time to reflect back on the year that was, and to compile a list of our best selling Italian Furniture items from 2011.
Now, on to the list of top 5 selling tables, all of which were classic Italian style:
1. The 1149 “Orchidea” table has been our top seller for years. It’s shown here with an inlaid top, though it’s also available with a solid wood top, or in any number of gloss lacquered colors.
2. The 1238 dining table is one that we regularly produce in sizes well over 10 foot. Shown here in the showroom, it gives a nice view of the burled wood inlaid top.
3. Since the 1111 features such a beautiful floral inlay, I thought it best to show it with this zoomed view of the top (with matching Lazy Susan). It comes standard with an intricately carved pedestal, but like any of our made-to-order tables, can be modified to taste.
4. The 1232 long rectangular table gets special credit for being not only a top seller, but also the last table we sold in 2011. The chunky carved pedestal seems to be hit with clients.
5. Rounding out the top tables is the Talent Italian marble dining table. Hand made in Tuscany, it’s shown here in a white marble, but is available in a variety of different marble colors.
The top 4 selling Italian dining chairs for 2011 were (models 784, 841, 846, and 811, respectively):
To round out the top 10, a bit of a cheat. This item wasn’t actually the 10th best seller, but regularly draws attention in our showroom window. It’s an Italian bench, and I even got to personally hand deliver one to a local client this year.
That’s the top 10. Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for 2012!
One of my favorite events of the year is the annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile, taking place next week in Milan. It’s a truly overwhelming display of 
