Our Company Museum is not a simple display of products and objects. It’s a path full of professionalism, passion and family warmth tools, objects and documents have been patiently collected since the 70s by Vittorio Baggio Jr and they have been carefully preserved in the warehouse of the company’s original headquarters, for the purpose of documenting the family business. Vittorio’s dream and his vivid memory drove his sons Silvia and Franco, and his nephew Matteo, to investigate and to research deeper, until the realization of the museum in 2013.
In this place we share cultural, historical, artistic and professional values that all together create a rich heritage of knowledge, manual experience and typical Italian inventiveness.
Each object has its own story, handed down from father to son, and written in the panels beside each piece.
— 1940
MODEL N.35
Design Vittorio Baggio Senior
During the period of the Second World War, the sawmill and artisan workshop in Via Colleoni in Thiene (VI), was manufacturing several models of wooden chairs. The owner Vittorio Baggio Senior, designed and put into production also an armchair with reclining back with an ingenious system to tilt the backrest, using the footrest. Entirely made of beech wood, the covering was in cotton canvas. This model is certainly one of the most important iconic pieces and is exhibited in the museum together with a precious copy of the original catalogue from the 1940s.
— 1976
Folke
By Niels Gammelgaard for IKEA
The first meeting with Mr.Ingvar kamprad founder of IKEA was in 1974 in Milan, during the Funiture Faie, Salone del Mobile. From that date begins a long collaboration that will continue for many years. One of the first chairs made for IKEA is the Folke, design Niels Gammelgaard chair, with metal structure and polypropylene seat and back in white, red and brown. In the 1976 IKEA catalog, the FOLKE chair was “The Chair”, an innovative design chair with a fold-down backrest that could be attached to the table top when cleaning.
— 1992
Baba©
Design Sergio Mian
The Baba chair (covered by international copyright from 1992) was designed by the architect Sergio Mian in the October of 1991 and started to be produced by Altek in February 1992. The chair was officially presented for the first time in 1993 at the “Salone del Mobile” in Milan and in 1994 the architect Sergio Mian designed the Baba stool and the Baba armchair. The models of the Baba collection got immediately an enormous success all over the world, especially in U.S.A, where they have been exposed at many furniture fairs and where they have been advertised in the most important design and architecture magazines.
Today it still represents the best seller product of Altek Italia Design and it has became “a classic” for the furnishing of restaurants, cafes, hotels, universities, banks, and homes.
The Baba stool has become an icon in U.S.A. thanks to the Clint Eastwood performance at the republican convention in Tampa, Florida, the 3rd of September 2012, as he used it as the protagonist of his electoral speech.