Collection: ACERBIS

Acerbis is one of the leading companies in the Italian design furniture industry. With 150 years of experience in the constant pursuit of modernity, the brand has produced extraordinarily innovative creations. Acerbis products - like the Moodboard console or the Axis table - have essential and rigorous lines and a perfect combination of materials and finishes. Taking stimuli and suggestions from the world of architecture, interior design, and fashion, Acerbis is an influencer in the industrial design field. Its products have won important international awards. With a family tradition based on an innovative vision and a design universe that combines function and the avant-garde, Acerbis continues its mission with renewed vigor thanks to its acquisition by MDF Italia and the choice of Francesco Meda and David Lopez Quincoces as the creative directors who will guide the brand towards an even more dynamic future.

Acerbis, design icons and new collections

Based on high-precision production and a consolidated legacy of superior craftsmanship, Acerbis has revolutionized contemporary living with modular furniture, reinterpreting sideboards, bookcases, and storage units, many of which are on display in world-class museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In constant pursuit of innovative uses of materials, Acerbis has become a leader in the field of high-quality lacquering, inventing its own patented lacquer finishing method, Caoxol, to provide unprecedented levels of gloss and durability. With its unique skill in producing special locking systems, hinges, and other custom components – legacies from traditional furniture-making craftsmanship - Acerbis offers its customers a luxury experience that combines conceptual aesthetics with functionality.
In its years of experimentation and industrialization, Acerbis has forged its own DNA of Italian ingenuity by targeting a clientele that looks to the future. The new creative directors, Francesco Meda and David Lopez Quincoces, combine their proven strengths in architecture and industrial design. With a passion for the history of design and a visionary view of the contemporary project, the two have tapped into the Acerbis archives, "re-mastering" creations whose modernity is still current today. Future collections will involve the most exciting designers from the latest generations, but to begin, Meda and Lopez Quincoces are focusing on rediscovering the most original and daring designs from the Acerbis archives, reinterpreting them for today's market. The original plexiglas structure of the Life modular sofa by Roberto Monsani, an avant-garde design never presented to the public, is reworked in curved wood to meet the material and environmental preferences of our era. Storet by Nanda Vigo offers flexibility with a wide range of dimensions. Two designs by Gianfranco Frattini have been reissued; the Maestro table is larger, and the Gong coffee table reappears with new anthracite and brass finishes. Giotto Stoppino's Jot chair is enriched with Bauhaus color for the structure in chrome-plated tube emphasizing the dramatic shape and the typical industrial aesthetics. Stoppino's Menhir coffee table reappears with new heights, a marble base, and a walnut and metal top instead of the original glass. Again by Stoppino, the Sheraton sideboard was a 1979 Compasso d'Oro ADI winner; today, it explores new closures and sports a new glossy Acerbis lacquer that the two designers have reinvigorated with the typical colors of vintage Jaguars and Porsches. Each archival design has been carefully selected by Meda and Lopez Quincoces to celebrate the legendary era of experimentation of the Acerbis icons. The foundations of beauty and functionality rooted in the brand's tradition are the premises for the future chapters of its history.

The history of Acerbis, a century and a half of Italian design

Based initially in Bergamo's Seriana Valley, in a part of northern Lombardy devoted to the furniture industry that made Milan the world capital of design, Acerbis was passed down from father to son until the fourth generation, which today sees Enrico Acerbis as the new brand ambassador. Founded in 1870 by Benvenuto Acerbis, a skilled wood craftsman who created a solid clientele thanks to his personalized handcrafted designs, the company evolved - always as a family business - from Benvenuto's craftsmanship to mass production under Lodovico Acerbis in the 1960s. This era was characterized by the company's collaborations with some of the most innovative Italian and international designers of the time like Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Vico Magistretti, Nanda Vigo, Gianfranco Frattini, Giotto Stoppino, Mario Bellini, and Andrea Branzi. Acerbis is one of the few Italian companies to have taken part in the first editions of the Salone del Mobile in Milan, participating for the first time in 1965; the brand has presented new designs at every edition of the fair since then. In today's globalized design world, companies grow their success thanks to strategic partnerships. Starting in 2019, MDF Italia joined forces with Acerbis by acquiring the furniture brand. Together the two interconnected brands now explore new markets, consolidating their commercial vitality to face the continuous changes of the global market. "This acquisition guarantees the strength and continuity of a brand that has always been a standard-bearer in the world of design," says Enrico Acerbis. With the merger, the companies' sales and marketing divisions share a headquarters in Mariano Comense. MDF Italia provides the strength of its distribution network, its high capacity production system, and the skills of its marketing structure. At the same time, Acerbis contributes with its consolidated international sales network and technological know-how resulting from decades of research on materials, furniture construction, and opening systems. The two brands reaffirm their status as complementary pillars of Italian design, growing together while maintaining their individual positioning, targets, and design identities.