Sessantuna

An idea to celebrate Italy in its 150th anniversary since the unification. Gaetano Pesce and Cassina have decided to realize a project that is not so much a furniture item as a way to conceive and produce design. Sessantuna. A unique and unitary work. Sixty-one icons, all of them similar, and all rigorously different. Sixty-one tables, as 1861, the year of the Unification of Italy. Each
of these items represents a piece of our land. In fact, if we were one day to unite them and place them alongside one another, we could reconstruct an Italian map, measuring 25 by 30 metres, a poetic homage to the country of creativity and art. An enormous work, with no equal in the world, fruit of the union between the idea of a designer and the knowhow of a company.
With Sessantuna the concept of design as replica of marvellous identical pieces has been surpassed.
The industrialization has been effected with the surprise of infinite variations, some casual and others studied; the result is authentic objects that are similar yet different, lust like every person is similar and different from every other. Sessantuna is a celebration of the femininity of Italy, but also of the creative process. “My way to conceive the future – declares Pesce – is feminine; masculinity has made history and many beautiful and important things, but today it may run the risk of repeating itself. To renew itself, history must be come feminine...” The Sessantuna project
is a new version of the famous tricolour table Sansone (which is no longer in production) by Gaetano Pesce and Cassina from 1980. Every Sessantuna table is composed of innovative resins cast in the three colours of the Italian flag, with a very avant-garde manufacturing process that has made it possible to optimize the final result, reduce the overall weight and obtain casual and fascinating mixing effects that make every table unlike every other. Also the legs of the table are peculiar, as they are independent from one another, and may therefore be fastened to the housings and oriented according to preference.
Sessantuna is a work conceived to retrace the history of the Unification of Italy. All the tables, signed by Gaetano Pesce, are numbered in the historical order in which the single territories have joined the new State. Every table has its historical relevance, including the islands, of which size has been exaggerated to stress every important contribution to the concept of unification.
A special edition of five tables, chosen from those representing the most important places of the history of the Risorgimento (Turin, first Capital of the Kingdom – Milan, the Five Days – Genoa, Mameli composes the Italian national anthem – Marsala, the landing of the One Thousand – Teano, Meeting of Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II) have been personalized by the Master with sentences and famous citations from history. The first came under the hammer in June 2010 in London, during the theme auction “Italia” of the famous Auction House Philips de Pury & Company.
All the other tables, which may be personalized with a sentence chosen by the buyer and with a silk-screened handwriting by Pesce on a leg, are available from Cassina dealers all over the world and may be purchased either directly or by signed and authenticated online offers that are visible to all buyers. The system provides for informing both the dealer and the buyer whenever an offer has been raised, thus making it possible to raise the bid. On 8 AM of 2 June 2011 it will no longer be possible to enter new offers in the system, and one will thus proceed with the assignation of the tables. The sixty-one tables will be scattered across the world, but they will continue to remain conceptually close, to celebrate the unity and uniqueness of Italy. Sessantuna. A work that is not just an artistic homage to our past but a bridge to the future that will remain a marvellously unique work forever.