Mezzadro Zanotta

From design to product
How great those years between the 1950s and the 1960s must have been, when there was a wish to change, rebuilding this little ancient world. How great those years must have been for two close-knitted brothers, who were inquisitive and intuitive, the years of a purebred entrepreneur, who had the intuition and the braveness of someone who wanted to make that world his own.
In 1970 Zanotta put the “springy metal seat”, metaphorically named “Mezzadro” into production, that the brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni designed in 1957 (together with the Sella seat, in production since 1983) for the exhibition “Shapes and colours in today’s homes” organized in Villa Olmo in Como.
Mezzadro is a loud and clear message of freedom to define the domestic spatial environment.
“With this rather unusual homage name, the object brings to mind Neo Vanguardism, from the provocative nature of Arte Povera to the irony of Pop Art. Like a work by Duchamp, the assembly of craft-based and industrial components holdstogether: the farming world in the sheet metal seat and the steel crossbow, the cycling world in the fixing pin and the nautical one in the beech wood crosspiece.”
Chromium-plated steel stem. Seat lacquered in the colours: orange, red, yellow, white or black. Footrest in steam-treated beech, natural colour.