Enzo Mari is a master of Italian design. Born in 1932 and now living in Milan, he is known for his collaboration with Italian brand Danese, for whom he designed everyday objects like letter openers, buckets, pencil holders, calendars, ashtrays and more, as well as toys. Released in 1957, 16 Animali, or 16 Animals, was his first design for Danese, a wooden puzzle for children that is still in production today. Each of the animals – from elephant to hippo, snake to kangaroo – is a simple shape with a small dot for an eye.
The shape of the animals was determined through a painstaking process of problem-solving and the pieces are made with a continuous cut in a single piece of wood. A toy for teaching and for play, it is an expression of Mari’s sense of proportion, scale and balance and speaks to his ability to create visual harmony. He says: “The shapes of toys must be based on archetypal images, and these images must be realised with the highest possible quality and not in the style of ‘children’s drawings’.” (Interview, 2009, Metropolis.)
In the same year that Mari released 16 Animali, Milan architect and designer Gio Ponti released his Superleggera chair, a super thin and super lightweight construction whose simplicity belies its engineering genius. Ponti treated his buildings and his furniture in the same way; his approach was ruled by his fascination for what he called the “finished form… unchangeable, unrepeatable, unique, and coherent.” (2017, Incollect.) He believed that he was responsible for returning order to the world. The MAXXII Museum in Rome is showing the exhibition Gio Ponti: Loving Architecture until 27 September 2020, which includes archive materials, models, photographs, books, magazines and objects.
Another big name in Italian design and beloved by the Milanese is Achille Castiglioni. His playful and inventive spirit has been kept alive by his family who have retained his studio and, from there, tell wonderful stories about him to visitors from around the world. At the end of my own visit to his studio in 2014, I felt I almost knew the man and that he was wonderful.
Born in 1918, Achille Castiglioni graduated from architecture in 1944 and worked collaboratively with his brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo to create many icons of Italian industrial design. After his brothers’ deaths, Achille continued to create new designs until his death in 2002. His designs are full of wonder and curiosity, which can be seen in experimental designs like his Mezzadro Seat inspired by a repurposed tractor seat and his Spoon for Jars for Alessi, an implement designed to get every last bit of Nutella.
Probably the most incredible of his works is the Arco lamp designed in 1962, a beautiful ode to geometry described in semicircles. This was one of a number of designs Achille created with brother Pier Giacomo during the 1960s, a time when Italian design had ambitions not only to create new works of design, but also to change society for the better. Arco was designed with modernist materials – steel and marble – created for the ultimate modernist home. Beware of replicas – you will know it is a genuine Arco if it has a hole in the base, which is designed to fit a broom handle used for moving such a heavy piece of marble.
Also designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo a few years later in 1965, the Radiofonografo by Brionvega was the ultimate in technology at the time, and has recently been updated with new technology and rereleased to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Achille Castiglioni.
At the same time in Milan, Vico Magistretti was working as an architect and a designer, creating classics in lighting design such as the Eclisse lamp (also released in 1965). This classic 1960s pop design icon features a simple sphere set within a sphere – the inside shape can revolve to reveal more or less of the light source inside to create a dimming effect, like an eclipse. From a 21st Century perspective, the design looks pretty retro – a bit The Jetsons, a bit like an astronaut’s helmet – but the simplicity of the shape holds up and the lamp is still being sold today.
Perhaps just as 1960s but a lot less colourful is the Sella Sofa by Carlo di Carli, released in 1966 with Tacchini. Carli was also an architect and designer, but made his mark as a beloved professor at the Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated in 1935, was Dean of the Faculty of Architecture from 1965 to 1968, and taught until 1986. Sella is a sofa you can imagine would be the perfect accompaniment to a smoking jacket – leathery and beautifully detailed. It was recently rereleased by Arper.
Another classic Italian design, again in 1960s pop style, is the Valentine typewriter. Designed by Ettore Sottsass for Olivetti, this was no ordinary machine – it features sensuous curves and a lipstick-red bright finish. These, combined with the name itself were all factors in the success of the design, which turned machinery into something sexy. Deyan Sudjic describes the creation of the Valentine in his book, Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things: “In the revolutionary year of 1968, when Sottsass convinced Olivetti to manufacture a portable typewriter with a bright red body, named the ‘Valentine’, he suggested that this was a machine that was designed to keep poets company on lonely weekends in the country.”
Although born in Innsbruck, Ettore Sottsass grew up in Turin and is considered to have been one of the most influential designers in Italy. Following his early success with Olivetti, he became involved in the Radical Design movement, exploring sculpture and international influences with an experimental attitude. As an expression of this rebellion, Sottsass subsequently formed postmodern collective Memphis and one of the most recognisable of the first collection, put out in 1981, is the Carlton Room Divider. This piece of furniture was designed to signify a complete break from functionalism, acting as a bookshelf, dresser and room divider in one. It features a mishmash of colours and shapes with an “anthropomorphic stick type figure with a cubic open box forming the design apex” (Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences).
This spirit of experimentation and playfulness continues in Italian design into the following decades. The Gufram Cactus was designed by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello in 1972 – the pair were inspired by pop culture as Sottsass had been. Grace Lees-Maffei and Kjetil Fallan wrote in Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design: “Leading pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol influenced Italian designers to play with forms, symbols and connotations.”
Lastly, the Marenco sofa by Mario Marenco is a bittersweet inclusion – Marenco unfortunately died after a few days in hospital in March this year at the age of 85. As well as being known as a designer, he was beloved in Italy as a radio and television personality, and was also the author of a series of humorous books. He designed the Marenco Sofa in 1970 for Arflex – its plump cushions form the silhouette of the piece. A longtime favourite of Pritzker prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, the Marenco sofa features in almost every house Ando has designed.
The period from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s was a formative and prolific time in Italian design, and many of these pieces are still in production or collected today, revered as classics. There were so many pieces to choose from for this design edit, this list is but a small sample. As for contemporary Italian design, stay tuned! Top 10: Italian contemporary design will be published soon.