A self-portrait of Carlo Mollino taken between 1936 and 1938 in Casa Miller, his private studio in Turin. ...Neglected during his lifetime, Mollino’s work is now coveted by collectors. One reason is obvious — what Ms. Antonelli calls his “frisson.” Single and childless, Mollino devoted his life to his obsessions. He completed the 24-hour race at Le Mans in a car of his own design, and loved inventing new instruments for his airplanes. An avid skier, he pioneered new techniques of downhill racing and wrote a book on the sport, as well as one on the history of photography. He produced hundreds of his female nudes from the 1930s onward to add to his vast collection of erotica. Fascinated by new photographic techniques, Mollino switched to a Polaroid camera in 1963, when his images became more sexually explicit. He conceived each one as an erotic fantasy and dictated every detail: directing the models (most of whom he had hired for the purpose and only photographed once) as well as designing the clothes, sets, props and garçonnières, the last of which is now the museum. Mollino fused all of this in his furniture by creating structurally complex pieces in improbably sensual shapes. The backs of his chairs look like voluptuous female torsos, and the table legs taper down to slender “ankles”. It does not take a psychoanalyst to work out why shamelessly sexy furniture infused with the designer’s memories of racing at Le Mans and piloting his jet over the Alps should impress Alpha-male collectors, but there are other reasons for its success. One is the scarcity of Mollino’s work. “Its great appeal is the immediately seductive look,” said Phillipe Garner, director of design at Christie’s, which sold a Mollino table for $3.8 million in 2005, then a record for 20th century furniture. “The facts that virtually every piece can be traced to a specific commission and that production was very limited add the appeal of rarity.” Then there is Mollino’s zest for engineering. Obsessed by anything mechanical, he enjoyed experimenting with new processes, components and materials. Insisting on deepest secrecy, Mollino asked his favorite Turinese workshops to make his pieces on Sundays, when no one else was around, and to hide them under blankets for the rest of the week. He then badgered the craftsmen until each detail was perfect. The result was a technical sophistication, which saved even his most brazenly sexual pieces — and Mollino himself — from vulgarity. Dark and brooding with a dramatic moustache, he had the camp air of a pantomime villain, and could have passed for one, if not for the rigor of his work. Mollino’s approach to design also has greater resonance today. His idiosyncrasies, refusal to compromise and other qualities that alienated his peers now endear him to designers, especially young ones, who want to work as expressively as he did. “His freedom of expression is overpowering,” said Martino Gamper, the Italian designer who recently created a series of furniture from discarded chunks of Mollino’s chairs. “Mollino pushed shapes, materials and the people around him to a fantastical limit. Pure fantasy.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/fashion/04iht-design4.html]