SCHIFFINI

Schiffini is a Ligurian company founded by Enrico Schiffini in the mid-1920s to produce wooden furniture for ships constructed at the La Spezia shipyards. From the 1950s on, the brand's name was renowned in the world of designer kitchens. Thanks to the first modular kitchens designed by Vico Magistretti, Schiffini achieved national and international fame as a manufacturer of high-quality kitchens, distinguished by their construction, careful choice of materials, innovative functions and solutions. Concept design and collaboration with influential designers like Jasper Morrison, Alfredo Häberli, Alfonso Arosio, Giuliano Giaroli and Gitta Gschwendtner, Ludovica and Roberto Palomba have reinforced the company's success. In May 2016, Renato Goretta boosted Schiffini's international reach by acquiring the company with capital from a London-based investment fund. This move led to the opening of showrooms from Shanghai to Miami, London and Tel Aviv. In March 2020, the company was bought out by the Pisan company Toncelli Cucine di Peccioli.

Schiffini and Magistretti, a winning partnership

The history of Schiffini kitchens began in 1963 with the production of Prima, a modular wood kitchen. Three years later, the company took its big step into collaboration with Vico Magistretti. The partnership between Schiffini and Magistretti created Timo kitchen furniture, presented in 1968 at the eighth Salone del Mobile in Milan. The collection in ash wood panelling with a neutral finish is enlivened by soft, colourful plastic profiles with grip and stop functions. The wall cabinets are characterised by their double height and depth that optimise space. Timo was followed by many other projects. The Arnia Wall System has a system of supporting uprights fitted with a rack to allow free positioning of furniture, shelves and accessories. The Cina kitchen (still in production) is characterised by a handle hidden in the groove in the upper part of the doors or the lower part of the wall units. The Solaro kitchen has grooved handles that recall the wheels of racing yacht rudders. The Space System replaced traditional doors with large drawers. With its characteristic wavy metal doors, the Cinqueterre aluminium kitchen is still a favorite. Soviore is characterised by lacquered or wood-panelled aluminium slats and large drawers.

Schiffini kitchens designed by contemporary designers

In 2002, Schiffini began collaborating with Alfredo Häberli, resulting in the Mesa kitchen that invites conviviality and socialising thanks to large table with benches from which the project takes its name (mesa means table in Spanish). Pampa is a wood kitchen with compact volumes. Its designer replaced the classic handle with a discreet curved slit cut into the veneer, which rises at the top and compresses at the bottom, showing its presence only with a shadow line.
Gitta Gschwendtner designed The Drawer Kitchen, a functional and sculptural island kitchen composed of a series of overlapping drawers that give it the appearance of an "exploded" storage unit. Created for the Handmade event at Wallpaper 2010, it went into production in 2014. Jasper Morrison also designed a Schiffini kitchen, Lepic, a project that translates the Super Normal concept, upon which all the work of the London designer is based, into a highly versatile modular system with infinite compositional variants. Its essential and apparently simple appearance is rich in detail with studied combinations of different materials and endless compositional variations. The doors, in Fenix with natural oak edges, alternate with open compartments. They are characterised by deliberately prominent handles in solid natural oak or painted metal with a cast-iron effect. The Schiffini kitchen catalogue also includes One 12 by Alfonso Arosio and Giuliano Giaroli. The handle is replaced by the shape of the door’s upper edge. Spezie, designed by Ludovica + Roberto Palomba, is characterised by linear shapes and anodised aluminium handles positioned inside the door.