Altek Museum is not a simple display of our company’s products and objects. In fact, it’s a path full of professionalism, passion and family warmth tools, objects and documents have been patiently collected since the 70s. Vittorio Baggio Jr. has been carefully preserving them in the warehouse of the company’s original headquarters, specifically 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.
Discover some of the products you can find in Altek Museum and read about them below.
— 1940
MODEL N.35
Design Vittorio Baggio Senior
During 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. The peculiarity was an ingenious system to incline the backrest, that could be tilted using the footrest. Entirely made of beech wood, the covering was in cotton canvas. This model was certainly one of the most important iconic pieces since the beginning: today, it 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 Fair, 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 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 since 1992) was designed by architect Sergio Mian in October 1991 and started to be produced by Altek in February 1992. After that, the chair was officially presented for the first time in 1993 at “Salone del Mobile” in Milan. In 1994 the architect Sergio Mian broadened the collection by designing also the Baba stool and the Baba armchair. The models of Baba collection got immediately an enormous success all over the world, especially in the US. Here, they have been exposed at many furniture fairs and have been advertised in the most important design and architecture magazines.
Today it still represents the best seller product of Altek Italia Design and has become “a classic” for the furnishing of restaurants, cafes, hotels, universities, banks, and homes.
In recent years, Baba stool has become an icon in U.S.A. thanks to the Clint Eastwood performance at the republican convention in Tampa, Florida, on September 3rd, 2012, as he used it as the protagonist of his electoral speech.