Italian Nutwood Campanino Children’s Chair by Levaggi, 1950

Amazing Mid-Century and very rare nutwood childern chair. The amazing “Campanino” was designed by the Levaggi brothers during 1950 in Chiavari, Italy. Both the structure and the materials are simply astonishing, the precision of the decoration testifying perfect partisanship. These chairs were originally designed in 1807 by Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi. A perfect item for a gift and for a child room. The passion shared by the three generations of Fratelli Levaggi is pure and simple: shaping wood with their own hands. Young creativity is channelled by the experience and knowledge of the elders, who guide the process from the cutting of the tree to the assembling and painting of individual components. They work with a variety of woods that are part of the time-honoured Chiavari chair tradition and leave very few steps of the process up to modern machinery, favouring a human assessment and manual approach to ensure high quality and attention to detail. Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi (1767-1855) was a Genoese furniture maker, best known as the inventor of the Chiavari chair. Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi was born in Chiavari in the Republic of Genoa in 1767, the son of a cooper. He was called “il Campanino” (“the bell ringer”) because his grandfather was the bell-ringer of the Bacezza church. Descalzi was apprenticed to one of the best master carpenters of Chiavari, and became a master craftsman himself. In 1795 the Descalzi brothers opened a furniture workshop. In 1796 he received a silver medal for two wooden chests of drawers from the Chiavari Società Economica, which had been founded five years earlier by the Marquis Stefano Rivarola. Descalzi introduced the use of a polished slab of San Giacomo slate as a tabletop, a low-cost alternative to marble. In 1807 Rivarola challenged Descalzi to design a new, modern chair based on a chair that he had brought from Paris. Descalzi created a simple, practical and elegant design for a cherrywood chair. The chairs are both light and robust. Descalzi exploited traditional knowledge, paid strict attention to quality and developed new manufacturing techniques. Chairs using the “Chiavarine” design became extremely popular and were purchased by many of the monarchs of the time. Descalzi’s furniture designs won numerous medals at trade shows. His sons Emanuele and Giacomo and their descendants continued the chair making industry that he had founded. Many other factories opened in Chiavari and the surrounding towns, and some continue to make furniture today.