The History of Italian Design
The art critic and essayist Edoardo Persico was the first person to discuss design in Italy after travelling around Europe. He wanted to bring the potential of rational planning to public attention, through displays dedicated to housing, furnishing and urbanism.
Persico believed in making comfort accessible to everyone through high quality objects at a low price. However, not everyone shared the same objective as he did. At the beginning of the 1930s, the art critic Ugo Ojetti wrote: “First the democratic chimera and then poverty came to humiliate the decorative arts, and not only them. How many exhibitions have we seen of modest and rough furniture benignly designed by middle class architects for labourers’, farmers’, workers’ houses? They would have been very practical and very helpful if those architects hadn’t forgotten an eternal truth: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the workers and the farmers have always wanted and will always want to imitate, even in furniture, the socially higher class that they consider as a model”.
In 1939, the Second World War reached Italy and the majority of Italian people ceased to think about the aesthetics of objects. Things existed only if they were useful and functional to the regime’s policies. Function over form.
However, some manufacturers chose not to play by these new rules.
In 1946, as a response to the population’s need to move around during the war, Corradino D’Ascanio designed the Vespa, an iconic symbol now synonymous with style, freedom and all things Italian. It was one of the earliest examples of Italian design where function was still as important, but form rose to its equal: both vital.
Unlike designers throughout the rest of Europe whose focus had shifted to assembly lines and factories, Italian designers were still inspired by the visual arts and deeply connected to the traditions of craft. When considered alongside Italy’s tremendous artistic cultural heritage, this has led to the creation of products that will always remain masterpieces, thus elevating Italian design worldwide appreciation.
“THE VESPA WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXAMPLES OF ITALIAN DESIGN WHERE FUNCTION WAS STILL AS IMPORTANT, BUT FORM ROSE TO ITS EQUAL: BOTH VITAL.”
Another market growing exponentially at the time was home appliances, especially those with a plastic body. This was because, unlike furniture, the majority of home appliances didn’t have to go from crafts to industry but could be instead started with a mechanical mass production - an American import. The use of new machines coincided with a strong market demand; caused by the large-scale production, the difficulty in obtaining service staff, higher standards of life and the possibility of instalment payments, the latter extending the purchase of such equipment to the poor as well as the rich. It was the democracy of design.
The electrical household appliances sector was a manifestation of the Italian post-war boom, and a new breed of entrepreneurs from different fields were enlisted to produce these machines. Inexpensive but durable materials with a linear design offered the unique opportunity to correct the production set in real time and from scratch, whilst also allowing scope to add new lines to the optimal product. This was considered rational design, meaning each appliance had to have a regular and even modular shape in order to be assembled with other equipment allocated in the kitchen; which is why today all ovens and dishwashers have standardised dimensions. This modularity was something that would go on to inspire the American kitchens only a few years later.
“ITALIAN DESIGNERS WERE STILL INSPIRED BY THE VISUAL ARTS AND DEEPLY CONNECTED TO THE TRADITIONS OF CRAFT.”
Olivetti is one of the best examples for tracing the journey of Italian design across a century. Founded in 1908, Olivetti was famous for its celebration of design. In 1911 Olivetti exhibited the first Italian typewriter, the Olivetti M1, at the Turin Universal Exposition. It was not the technology of the M1 that separated it from the similar American machines on which it was modelled; it was the aesthetics.
Many years later the Museum of Modern Art in New York would recognise Olivetti's enduring commitment to design with an exhibition of its greatest works and a public celebration of the company as the leading design firm of the Western World.
Moving on a couple of decades, the 1960s were an exciting and vibrant time for Italian design. New materials were introduced in furniture design thanks to Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, who together won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963 for their innovative work in the field of high polymers. These advanced materials enabled the move from limited production in workshops to mass production in factories. It was several years later, in the 1980s, that inflation dropped and industrial activity in Italy really started to expand in earnest. It was from this point that ‘Made in Italy’ became the key sentiment of the new economic development. Italian fashion, design and furniture became the benchmark of quality and taste for international markets.
Today Italy is the leading exporter of furniture in the world. It is a pioneer in product design aesthetics, which has firmly situated Italian design as the definitive global trendsetter. Italian design is the result of a virtuous circle consisting of quality labour, a winning manufacturing model, constant technological innovation and a unique creative attitude towards the market.
To this date, when it comes to design, Made in Italy remains second to none.
– Mike
February 2021