sold / 'Amanta' fiberglass coffee table by Mario Bellini for C&B Italia, 1966

Somewhere around 1932 glass wool, nowadays called ‘fiberglass’, was invented by Games Slayter for thermal insulation of buildings. It is made from molten glass which has been rapidly cooled and then solidifies in fine threads. The threads, or fibers, are then interwoven, adding various polymeric substances and resulting in the very strong and light-weight fiberglass. In the 1940s it became a popular material for the production of aircraft radomes. It only entered private interiors in the 1950s, when Charles and Ray Eames introduced their revolutionary design for the Eames Fiberglass chairs. In the sixties, the material was no longer dispensable in modern furniture design, and almost every renowned designer started exploring its possibilities. In 1966 Mario Bellini designed this coffee table, to be combined with his homonymous modular sofa.