Isabela Milagre, who sells Brazilian furniture from her Bossa gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea Arts District and on 1stDibs, knows that collectors focus on designers’ names, not companies. “People say, ‘I have a sofa by Charlotte Perriand,’ not, ‘I have a sofa from Cassina,’ ” she says. But if Brazilian modernism was pioneered by “name” designers like Bo Bardi and Rodrigues, it was popularized by manufacturers like Celina Decorações (Celina Decorations) and Fatima Arquitetura Interiores (Fatima Interior Architecture).
When Milagre began buying Celina and Fatima furniture, about five years ago, she had a lot to learn. “At first I thought, I’m going to do a show of work by two women designers, Celina and Fatima,” Milagre recalls. “Then, I started to do research.” She soon realized that Celina Decorações was run by Munis Zilberberg and named for his mother, an upholsterer. While producing furniture that tends toward solidity rather than sleekness, Zilberberg opened retail stores that helped introduce the look beyond his São Paulo base.
Fatima Arquitetura Interiores, meanwhile, was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1960 by architects Guilherme Nunes and Sávio Visconti, who designed most of the company’s pieces but also sponsored design competitions. The company’s right-angled furniture — even a lounge chair seems to promote good posture — is made mostly of jacaranda (also known as Brazilian rosewood) with leather, cotton and cane inserts.
Companies like Fatima and Celina brought machines into their workshops but still operated at an artisanal scale. It was Móveis Cimo (Cimo Furniture) that put modernism into mass production.
The firm grew out of a box factory founded in 1913 in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Owners Jorge Zipperer and Willy Jung turned it into what was said to be the largest furniture manufacturer in postwar Latin America. Yet design standards remained high. The seat of one particular sofa seems to float above the streamlined frame of imbuia wood, while lounge chairs rest on mere squiggles of hardwood and a bentwood rocking chair has arms as curvy as its rockers. “They did things with bent plywood that are more magical even than Breuer or Eames,” says Christian Larsen, a design curator and historian who specializes in Brazilian material culture.
Milagre acquires as many Móveis Cimo pieces as she can find, restoring them in Bossa’s São Paulo workshop before offering them for sale in near-perfect condition.