Giuseppe Maggiolini, the cabinetmaker who loved to creare wooden frameworks

Attracts sympathy from his name: for those who were not an expert in classic furniture, the word “maggiolini” reminds one of the most famous and beloved car of all time, but also a small beetle characterized by thin reddish-brown streaks, that remind those of wood.     And just the unmatched skill in woodworking is the hallmark of another Maggiolini, which we now want to take care: is Giuseppe Maggiolini, the most famous cabinet maker in the context of Neoclassical furniture, name certainly not unknown to the antique lovers, so that his – rare – works are today the Chimaera of every collector.

Some time ago we have already had a way of introduce the collections for the sleeping area Maggiolini style,  but from what is distinguished his furniture? What made it so famous and even today desired this style?      First of all the skill of the inlays: pratically free of carvings – fact not common to that era, we speak of the end of 1700 – furnishings created from this master cabinetmaker Lombard appear like real paintings created by playing with thin nuances of wood.  Floral motifs, whether they are bouquets or lush garlands, ribbons and festoons, or more interlacements of carnations, roses, ranunculus and tulips seem to bloom inside the furniture, while the soft acanthus leaves stretch towards the viewer.      What’s even more amazing when you consider that, in achieving its inlaied furniture, Maggiolini did not use dyes or other gimmicks: the different colors are obtained by using a large variety of wood essences, almost a hundred, ranging from boxwood to the bois de rose, from maple to the walnut that, as we have seen, it has always been considered the wooden prince of italian furniture tradition.

Particularly renowned in the production of Maggiolini are the paneled, who present themselves as works of art: a production that gave him so much and such fame that the eighteenth-century cabinet maker was fought over by the most refined courts, while even today his furniture are amongst the most popular between antique dealers.