Lino Sabattini

Sabattini is self-taught: it is still teenager, during the Second World War while working in a copper factory that he begins to be interested in metal. He became interested in metallurgy but especially in materials and techniques of goldsmithing. 

Sabattini then did an informal apprenticeship in pottery with the German ceramist who had taken refuge in Italy, Roland Hettner. In 1955, at the age of thirty, he moved to Milan where he set up his own workshop dedicated to metal and met Gio Ponti, who encouraged his design practice, wrote an article about him in Domus magazine and exhibited his creations the following year in Paris, which brought Sabattini to international attention. 

From 1956 to 1963, while still active in Milan, he became design director for Christofle Orfèvrerie, Paris. His signature can be found on elegant everyday objects such as candleholders, cutlery, kettles and vases whose innovative aesthetic tends towards a fusion of neoclassicism with modernism and minimalism. He has also designed glassware and ceramics for Rosenthal, Nava and Zani & Zani.