Calligaris

Calligaris was founded in 1923 by Antonio Calligaris in the Manzano area of Friuli, a region in northeastern Italy that has been the center of the Italian furniture manufacturing industry for more than a century. The Friuli furniture tradition, which developed from the region’s forestry industry and the woodworking craft that the Alpine timber supply supported, has produced a concentration of furniture manufacturers in the villages around Udine that together supply a significant percentage of the world’s Italian furniture market.

The Calligaris product line covers the full range of home furniture with a particular emphasis on the dining category: the dining table and chair systems that the company has developed over its century of production provide the combinations of table size, extension mechanism, material, and leg design that the dining room specification requires. The CS extension tables, which use a variety of mechanisms to extend from compact sizes to full entertaining dimensions, are among the most practically designed products in the Italian furniture market.

The Georgetown M Street showroom at 3328 is in the center of the design district block, between the B&B Italia showroom at 3330 and the BoConcept showroom at 3342. The Calligaris position in this design district provides the Georgetown furniture buyer with the comparison between the Italian furniture tradition at the luxury end, represented by B&B Italia, and the Calligaris offer at the quality-modern-Italian level that is accessible to a broader market.

The Georgetown design district customer who is furnishing a dining room in a Federal-period townhouse finds in the Calligaris catalog the range of dining table and chair combinations that the historical room dimensions can accommodate.

Hours run from 10am most days and 11am Sunday. The dining table and chair combination at Calligaris serves the Georgetown client who is furnishing the dining room of a Federal-period townhouse and who needs a table that can serve both the intimate family dinner and the larger dinner party that the Georgetown host convenes. The CS extension table mechanism, which adds leaves to extend the table from a compact size to a full entertaining dimension, is the practical solution to the Georgetown dining room’s dual-function requirement. The Italian furniture tradition that Calligaris represents brings the specific craft and production standards of the Friuli manufacturing region to the Georgetown market: the lacquered finishes, the solid wood and veneer construction, and the metal and glass options that the Calligaris catalog includes are all produced in the northeastern Italian region that has concentrated furniture manufacturing expertise for more than a century. The Georgetown dining room specification at the Calligaris price point, which is above the mass-market furniture brands but below the luxury Italian design houses, provides the quality-modern-Italian alternative for the Georgetown homeowner who wants Italian design without the B&B Italia investment. The showroom at 3328 M Street, in the center of the Georgetown design district block, allows the Georgetown furniture buyer to compare the Calligaris dining collection directly with the B&B Italia and BoConcept offerings on the same block. Hours run from 10am most days and 11am Sunday.