It was the passion for glass that represented, in the 1950s, the meeting point of Pierangelo Gallotti and Luigi Radice, the founding partners of a company that, before any other in Italy, promoted the use of glass in the furniture sector, through a precise and constant research on the quality of the materials and their possible processes, to be then put at the service of design.
Gallotti&Radice has grown by handing down all the secrets of glass processing, revealed over the years thanks to the highest level artisans involved in the company's production line, who have been able to increase, step by step, the level of knowledge of the handled materials.
Gallotti&Radice has adapted to the challenges posed by modernity by developing in parallel an industrialized production, characterized by advanced technologies and aimed at obtaining various parts of serial and standardized products, and a more artisanal one that still places the manual processing of glass at the center, so as to transform it into a design product that is inimitable every time.
GALLOTTI E RADICE MILANO : BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS SINCE 1955
It was 1955 when, united by the passion for glass, Pierangelo Gallotti and Luigi Radice decided to found an artistic space dedicated to the decoration of this material with infinite possibilities: mirrors, furnishing items and lighting fixtures, preciously handmade, were the first pieces produced by the couple, who already hinted at the desire to go further, to know every secret of glass in order to continue transforming it.
It is because of this aspiration that the two friends decided to enroll in the school of applied art to industry at the Sforzesco castle in Milan, where the technical drawing and decoration courses gave them the skills to develop real design products, that is what they would have done since the first day of Gallotti & Radice, founded in 1956.
The time dedicated to continuous research, to better master all the different processes, and the choice of relying on high-level craftsmen, led the company to receive in 1971 the request for collaboration from the architect Luigi Massoni, who designs the his first table for Gallotti&Radice, on the occasion of the setting up of a window of the Mobilia store in Milan, a reference point for national design. The result of this partnership is Adam, the first table made entirely of glass which, perhaps a little surprisingly, immediately met with great success, convincing the newborn company to insist on the same path.
This work will be followed by Tris, a set of three glass coffee tables that inaugurates the presence of the steel joint, the kaleidoscopic sculpture positioned in the garden of the Villa Reale in Monza and more recently, starting from 2008, the Air collection that brings the glass into the office.
GALLOTTI E RADICE TABLES : LA GALLERY
Since the first one created in collaboration with Luigi Massoni, tables and coffee tables have represented a trademark of Gallotti&Radice, incorporating the company's tendency for research.
The wide range of solutions available today, designed to satisfy every need or fantasy, is an expression of excellence, quality in details, finishes and shapes, obtained through various collaborations with many names in the design world.
GALLOTTI E RADICE TABLES : DESIGN AND MATERIALS
If glass was the inevitable starting point, which still resists today in very recent models such as Connection and Golden Moon made by Massimo Castagna, the company has not been able to control the desire to experiment with other materials as well, as demonstrated by examples such as Prism Low, coffee table in walnut wood, Oto Big with top and base in white Carrara marble, or Zen Black, able to combine ash, crystal, marble and aluminum in a single piece.
Regardless of the collection, however, for Gallotti & Radice the efforts aimed at knowing the materials and refining each process are in fact tools that are used to obtain design products, characterized by original shapes and designed to last over time.