The “Cardinale” is one of Lino Sabattini’s best-known designs, created for Christofle’s Gallia collection in 1956. Each vase rises from a wide circular base as a slender cone, narrows sharply at a pinched waist, and then flares into a crescent-shaped mouth with two pointed tips. The pointed silhouette is often compared to a cardinal’s mitre, which gives the model its name. A fine vertical seam runs the full height of each vase, and the folds at the waist catch the light like the facets of a sculpture.
Sabattini was one of the great Italian silversmiths of the postwar period. A protégé of Gio Ponti, he directed Christofle’s creative workshops from 1956 to 1963, and his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The “Cardinale” was published in Domus in the year it was designed. Each vase holds a single stem, but as a pair they read as a sculptural statement on a console or mantel.