Farewell to Ampelio Piarotto, king of modular furniture. He anticipated the arrival of Ikea in Italy by half a century

MIRANO – He knew how to look ahead, to guess the directions of market, be ahead of the times. “Woe to stop,” he replied with a smile when you met him at the factory, with an attentive and alert look, the determined air of someone who always knew what to do. With optimism. One step ahead of everyone. With its furniture, Ampelio Piarotto he had managed to create new worlds. His famous “Fitting”, modular system beautiful, resistant and simple to assemble and transport, they were adaptable to all the needs of Italy which, in the midst of the economic boom, needed new solutions for homes ready to house even the first appliances. Those mobile forever changed the world offurniture. Well before the arrival of Ikea.
The entrepreneur from Mirano, who turned 92 on 6 August, passed away yesterday in the early afternoon at his home in via Accoppè Fratte, a Campocroce, surrounded by the love of his wife Giuliana, his children Antonio and Caterina. “He was very lucid to the last, always present – says the family – but his physique was by now very weak: he died peacefully”.

THE CARREER

Ampelio’s was a great entrepreneurial adventure born in the distant past 1922, col father Antonio who, on his return from the war, starts as a carpenter, also going to study the most innovative solutions to manage spaces in the USA. An immediate success that brings him, in 1950s, to build theagency in Mirano, in via Caorliega. And it is here that Ampelio, with his brothers Giancarlo and Orfeo (who passed away in December 2004), takes his first steps: in the Sixties the first tests on “Fitting” lead Ampelio to anticipate the times. Also thinking about promotion: he is, in fact, one of the founders of “Cosmit”, the body that at the time brought together the many Italian furniture manufacturers, and which then materializes in the first Italian Furniture Fair, a Milano in 1961. And it is here that Ampelio officially presents his project, enjoying incredible success: orders and requests arrive from all over Italy and abroad.
And in 1963, the “Piarotto Mobili” expanded, new warehouses were built in via Accoppè Fratte. The company is very launched: at the Milan Show it participates until 1985, it appears on specialized magazines, in TV commercials, even on “Carousel”. Piarotto Mobili soon became one of the leading companies in the world of furniture. Even Giò Pomodoro, in 1978, with Ampelio created a beautiful and particular table in laminated wood.

THE 1990s

Production slowed down at the end of the 1980s, but Ampelio continued his work thanks to the help of his sons, and in particular of Pietro with whom, in 2005, he renewed production with other versions of the aluminum “Fitting” and with new patents. , then launching the products also in e-commerce. Pietro, however, died suddenly in 2017.
A very hard blow for Ampelio. Which is added to the one suffered in the 80s, when the eldest son Antonio, then 18 years old, was kidnapped in the annex of the house. «He never gave up – remembers those who met Ampelio -: he had a tenacious, contagious stubbornness, he always knew how to look ahead, with determination. And with that pinch of optimism that transformed the impossible into the possible ».

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