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In a director's cabin the phone is the busiest object on the desk, and usually the one trailing a cable. On Noah it charges where it lies: i4Mariani builds a Qi wireless charger into the top, so the handset rests on the veneer beside the writing pad and the surface stays free of adaptors and leads. Among our luxury executive tables, here the technology lives inside the top rather than in a box next to it.
The rest follows the same tidiness. The top, 220 × 105 cm and 78 cm high, carries a writing pad and an asymmetric edge in saddle leather or soft leather, and two pen trays of solid wood are let into its thickness. A cable flap, optional, takes laptop and lamp wires below. Two fixed units of different widths hold it up, with sides always clad in hide: on the user's side four drawers plus a little door for files and a PC, on the visitor's side open shelves for books. In a director's cabin the guest faces books, not the back of a pedestal.
The design is Umberto Asnago's, dated 2021, and the maker is i4Mariani of Mariano Comense, a family workshop since 1957. There is one size and there are four versions, Canaletto walnut and graphite-tinted ash, each of them also in crossed-grain veneer, with a desk tray in matching wood and leather and the cable flap on request. La Mercanti maps the sockets and cable runs of the cabin with you before the position of the desk is fixed.
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The ash is tinted graphite and varnished open-pore, so the grain stays perceptible under the hand; the Canaletto walnut is a flamed veneer with a wax-effect varnish. Both are rated 0 gloss, a fully matt surface. Graphite ash suits a cabin with dark leather and black accents, walnut a warmer room. Any finish beyond these two is a request to be agreed with the maker before ordering.
Never. The two fixed units are black melamine, and their sides are always clad in saddle leather or soft leather, the same hide chosen for the writing pad and edge. Because the desk is finished on every face, it can stand away from the wall, in the middle of a cabin, without showing a raw panel to anyone who walks round it.
Only saddle leather is finished with visible stitching; soft leather is not. The collections differ too: saddle leather comes in Vegetale, Harmonie and Privilege, soft leather in Luxe, Atelier, Privilege and Harmonie, Luxe being the one with printed hides. La Mercanti shows both as physical swatches so the choice is made by hand, not on screen.
That is the brief it was drawn to. i4Mariani describes Noah as a small piece of architecture that creates a real workplace while respecting the furniture already in place. In practice the desk does not ask for a matching wall unit or credenza: its own shelves and cupboards carry the storage, and the choice of walnut or graphite ash lets it sit beside what is already there.
i4Mariani, the company of the Mariani brothers, which began as a workshop in Mariano Comense in 1957. The desk itself is recent: Umberto Asnago designed it in 2021, and it combines the workshop's veneering with leatherwork on the pad, the edges and the sides of both pedestals.
Noah offers storage inside its top, behind the user's drawers and on shelves facing the visitor. Five simple moves to settle files, stationery and books so the working surface stays clear from day one.
Noah hides two small trays of solid wood inside the thickness of its top, under the writing pad. Reserve them for pens, a rubber stamp and a pen drive, the items that otherwise end up scattered across the surface during a long working day.
The wider pedestal gives the person seated four drawers of veneered plywood. Put live files in the top drawer, signed papers and references in the middle two, and archive material at the bottom, so the hand reaches first for what is used most.
The narrower pedestal, on the same side, closes with a small door that the maker intends for papers and a PC. Keeping the laptop there after hours leaves the top uncluttered, which matters when the cabin also hosts visitors the next morning.
Across the desk, the wider pedestal opens into shelves made for books. This is the side a visitor faces, so it deserves reports bound for display, reference volumes or a few chosen objects, while confidential files stay behind the hide-clad doors.
A matching desk tray, 68 cm long and finished like the desk itself in wood and leather, collects what has to remain on top: a notepad, glasses, a card holder. One line of objects in one place, and the writing pad stays free for work.
