Poltrona Frau-Cassina-Cappellini

Poltrona Frau, Cassina, and Cappellini are three Italian furniture brands with distinct histories and design philosophies that share the Georgetown showroom at 1010 Wisconsin Avenue NW. The three brands, which are now under the common ownership of the Haworth Group, together represent the full arc of the Italian furniture design tradition from the early twentieth century through the avant-garde contemporary.

Poltrona Frau was founded in Turin in 1912 by Renzo Frau, who developed the brand around the leather upholstery tradition of the Italian saddle-making craft. The Poltrona Frau leather, which is sourced and tanned to the specific standard that the brand requires for its upholstered furniture, is the product that the brand has maintained as its defining material across more than a century of production. The Archibald armchair, the Vanity Fair armchair, and the Chester sofa are the pieces most associated with the Poltrona Frau identity.

Cassina was founded in Meda in 1927 and achieved its defining status in the design world through the licensing agreements that gave the brand the exclusive rights to produce the furniture of Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, and subsequently the furniture of Mies van der Rohe and Gerrit Rietveld. The LC2 and LC3 armchairs by Le Corbusier, the Barcelona Chair by Mies, and the Red and Blue Chair by Rietveld are among the most studied objects in the history of design.

Cappellini, founded in Meda in 1946, has developed into the avant-garde branch of the Italian furniture market through collaborations with Jasper Morrison, Tom Dixon, and the Bouroullec brothers.

Hours run Monday through Saturday. The convergence of Poltrona Frau, Cassina, and Cappellini in a single Georgetown showroom represents the full narrative of Italian design in the twentieth century: the leather craft tradition of the Turin saddlemaker’s workshop that Poltrona Frau represents, the architectural modernism of the Bauhaus-influenced furniture that Cassina’s Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe editions embody, and the experimental avant-garde of the Cappellini program that the design culture of the late twentieth century produced. The Georgetown client who visits the 1010 Wisconsin showroom encounters these three threads of the Italian design story in the same space.

The Cassina catalog, which includes not only the Le Corbusier and Mies designs but the furniture of Gerrit Rietveld and Charles Rennie Mackintosh that Cassina has brought into production, is one of the most comprehensive archives of the modernist furniture tradition in a single manufacturer’s production program. The Georgetown customer who wants to place the LC2 armchair or the Barcelona Chair in a Georgetown room is making an architectural furniture choice that connects the Federal-period room to the modernist design tradition. Hours run Monday through Saturday. The 1010 Wisconsin Avenue showroom for Poltrona Frau, Cassina, and Cappellini is open Monday through Saturday, maintaining the professional showroom hours that the Georgetown design community and the residential renovation client require. The concentration of three Italian furniture brands in a single Georgetown showroom reflects the 1010 Wisconsin building’s identity as a design destination alongside the German Kitchen Center and M2L design studio at the same address.