Italian Furniture and Design
Italian furniture, lighting, glass and industrial design, especially the post-war boom led by Milan's architects and family-run manufacturers.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Italian Furniture and Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Italy's modern design rose from partnerships between architects and small, family-owned firms willing to experiment. Gio Ponti, who founded Domus magazine in 1928, designed the ultra-light Superleggera chair (1957) for Cassina. After the war the Milan Triennale and the Compasso d'Oro award, set up in 1954, gave designers a stage. Marcello Nizzoli's Lettera 22 typewriter (1950) for Olivetti showed industry could be elegant, and Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni hung a lamp from a steel arc anchored in marble for Arco (1962).
Gino Sarfatti's Arteluce fittings treated lamps as minimal constructions, and on Murano Fulvio Bianconi's folded Fazzoletto vases for Venini caught the fall of a dropped handkerchief. In the late 1960s plastics and protest arrived together: Gaetano Pesce's Up chairs (1969) swelled out of vacuum-packed foam, and radical groups questioned consumption itself, preparing the ground for Memphis. Look for bold outlines, fine finishes and a streak of wit.
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