Maxalto

Maxalto is the luxury line of B&B Italia, the Italian furniture manufacturer at the same M Street Georgetown address at 3330. The Maxalto line, which was designed by Antonio Citterio and launched in 1975, represents the classical Italian furniture tradition in a contemporary context: where B&B Italia’s main line draws on the modernist tradition of steel, glass, and technical materials, Maxalto uses the classical materials of solid wood, natural fabric upholstery, and the decorative joinery that the Italian furniture craft has employed since the Renaissance.

The Maxalto product line includes the sofas, armchairs, tables, and storage pieces that the Italian domestic interior tradition has always centered on, produced in the materials that the classical Italian craft employs: the solid walnut and oak that provide the warm brown palette of the traditional Italian room, the linen and silk upholstery fabrics that the Italian textile tradition produces, and the bronze and brass hardware that the classical Italian cabinet uses. The result is a furniture line that feels both historically rooted and contemporary in its proportions and its refinement.

Antonio Citterio’s design direction for Maxalto has produced some of the most widely reproduced images in Italian furniture design: the Alcova bed, the Febo armchair, and the Telamon sideboard are among the pieces that the design press uses most often to illustrate the Maxalto aesthetic. At the Georgetown M Street showroom at 3330, these pieces are presented alongside the B&B Italia main line in the showroom that the two brands share.

Hours run from 10am most days and noon Sunday. The Maxalto product line’s relationship to the B&B Italia main line, which the shared Georgetown showroom at 3330 M Street makes clear in the side-by-side presentation, is one of classical versus modern: the Maxalto pieces in solid wood and natural upholstery occupy a different aesthetic position from the B&B Italia leather and steel, but both programs emerge from the same Italian furniture manufacturing excellence. The Georgetown client who is furnishing a Federal-period townhouse may find that the Maxalto classical language is more appropriate to the room’s proportions and character than the modernist language of the B&B main line.

The Citterio design approach at Maxalto, which has been consistent over five decades of the program’s history, produces pieces that are identifiable across the full catalog: the slightly oversized proportions that make the sofa and the armchair feel generous, the visible wood frame that grounds the upholstered piece in the material tradition, and the specific hardware details that appear across the product line. The Georgetown M Street showroom at 3330 is open most days from 10am and noon on Sunday. The Maxalto and B&B Italia showroom at 3330 M Street NW is open most days from 10am and from noon on Sunday, providing the Georgetown interior design client with the full Italian furniture range in a single showroom visit. The combination of the Maxalto classical program and the B&B Italia modernist program allows the Georgetown client to make the side-by-side comparison that reveals the specific aesthetic position of each brand within the Italian furniture tradition.