Cavour desk Detail of

The Cavour desk was designed by the architect Carlo Mollino for
the interior of Casa Orengo in Turin.
The desk comprises only the parallelepipeds of the set of
drawers and single drawer, the transparent top and the supporting spine. It owes its elegance to the technique of
cold-moulding wood (developed and patented by Mollino himself), which enables
the achievement of a lighter, dynamic form that draws inspiration from the
organic movement. The
lightness, a fundamental mark of this furniture, is determined both by the use
of construction materials - maple wood - and by the dynamic shape of the legs.
Mollino, an architect by training, also worked as a designer in the 1940s,
designing furniture, often made as exclusive pieces. With these products,
Mollino tried to combine the artisan tradition with experimentation of new
materials and new technologies to obtain original objects that had total
freedom of form and were highly innovative from a static point of view, like
this desk with its "aeronautical structure", as the author himself described
it.

Carlo Mollino was among the architects who appeared most often
in the specialist magazines "Domus", "La Casa Bella" and
"Stile" between the two wars. An eclectic genius, he was interested in
photography, set design, essay writing and modern industrial experimentation. From aeronautics, for example, he drew
inspiration for the technique of cold-moulding wood, which enabled him to
experiment with freer, soaring lines. The American magazine
"Interiors" defined his new style as "baroque".