Phonola - MOD. 547 - Model Radio

An icon of Italian design! Phonola 547 miniature radio, designed in 1939 by Pier Giacomo and Livio Castiglioni and Luigi Caccia Dominioni for Phonola, in the beautiful black color. Reproduction of the very famous telephone-shaped model from the 1930s, which is one of the examples of Italian industrial design. Tested and working. Perfect condition.



Historical notes: Guglielmo Marconi's 1896 patent for the Wireless Telegraph system, designed for transmitting impulses suitable for Morse code, paved the way for long-distance wireless communications. The transmission of sounds became possible later with the invention of the vacuum valve (vacuum diode) by the English Sir John Ambrose Fleming in 1904. In 1906, the Audion (vacuum triode) was developed by the American Lee De Forest. The invention of the superheterodyne, patented in 1918 by Edwin H. Armstrong but later attributed to Lucien Levy, made frequency modulation possible. In the 1920s and 1930s, radios began to be widely adopted in homes. They were built with no expense spared and with particular attention to elegance: wooden cabinets, external control knobs, external valves, frame antennas, and trumpet speakers. Technological development then led to better circuits and valves, resulting in improved reception, including internal dynamic or electro-dynamic speakers, and reception not only in amplitude modulation but also in frequency modulation (1939). Early radios were mainly made of wood and were true decorative objects: furniture, consoles, ornaments. In 1930, a new material, bakelite, started appearing in various products, and around 1940, it began to replace ebonite in the casings of radio sets. Designers were responsible for creating the first radios with these new materials. Later, bakelite was also replaced by various plastic materials with even more flexible characteristics. The radio receiver in question, called 'Castiglioni,' was presented just a few months after the closure of the VII Triennale in September 1940, in the F.I.M.I. - Phonola parking lot, in a pavilion set up by the three designers Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Livio Castiglioni, and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. This radio is one of the first models that revolutionized the shape of devices produced in Europe and marks a turning point in the history of Italian industrial design. The goal was to produce a low-cost device using economical materials without neglecting quality, functionality, and aesthetics. The three designers based the design of the radio on the practicality of military equipment. It was their work that determined both the shape of the radio's casing and the rational arrangement of its internal components. Recently, the miniaturization of valves had been achieved, and it was this careful research, carried out in collaboration with the technicians of F.I.M.I. - Phonola, aimed at reducing the technical bulk of the equipment, that allowed the design of this radio whose outer shell follows the content and vice versa. The large compression of the receiver's body was the result of a refined mechanical drawing of the electromechanical parts by Livio Castiglioni in collaboration with Phonola technicians, which led to the horizontal arrangement of the vacuum tubes. List price in 1940: 1290 Lire!!

In the Castiglioni family, there is also Achille Castiglioni, who collaborated with timeless Italian design brands such as Brionvega, Flos, Alessi, Zanotta, and many others.