Gae Aulenti was one of the most influential and prolific Italian architects and designers of the post-war period. An advocate of the Neoliberty movement, she is remembered for the individual stylistic quality of her work, which spanned product design and major architectural projects.

Born in 1927, Aulenti studied architecture at Milan’s Polytechnic University and graduated as only one of two women in her class. She began her career in the 1950s as the editor of the design magazine Casabella, where she became one of the proponents of the Neoliberty movement: a type of revivalist architecture that emerged in reaction to the rationalist International style of modernism.

Aulenti applied these principles within her parallel career as a freelance architect and designer, where she worked for names such as Olivetti, Pirelli and Knoll. Committed to designing ‘forms that could create experiences’, her works are striking for their bold, playful and architectural nature – from her Locus Solus seating series (1964) to her cult- favourite Pipistrello lamp, two examples of how she contributed to Italy’s global dominance in the field of product design.

Arguably the crowning glory of Aulenti’s career, and the most famous symbol of her Neoliberty approach, was her elaborate renovation of the Musee d’Orsay. This led to further large-scale projects, such as the renovation of the Palazzo Grassi as an art museum in Venice, and designing a new space for the Pompidou in Paris – examples of her enormous legacy. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Grand International Prize at the 1964 Milan Triennial and the Praemium Imperiale in 1991.

Carlo Bartoli was an Italian architect and designer whose work ranged across building projects, industrial designs for furniture and consumer goods for mass production. Able to translate the challenge of consumer requirements into designs celebrated for their simplicity, he achieved particular success with his chair designs during the 1960s and 70s.

Bartoli was born in Milan in 1931, where he trained to become an architect. Part of a generation starting their career at the end of the war, he was inspired by important Italian figures in the field – among them Marcelo Nizzoli, and his friend Luciano Baldessari. He went on to open his own studio in 1960, working for companies such as Segis and Colombo Design, for whom he also took care of the art direction.

Bartoli’s first breakthrough design was the polyester Gaia armchair (Arflex, 1966), exhibited in the permanent collection at MoMA in New York and in the design collection at the Milan Triennale. Its robust, retro design, celebrated for its comfort, was mirrored in the subsequent 4875 chair (Kartell, 1970s). The chair was first in the world to be entirely made of polypropylene, and is now on show at the permanent design collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Bartoli’s interests broadened to encompass architectural and environmental rehabilitation. He also taught at the Advanced Course of Industrial Design in Florence and Rome and at the Milano Politechnic University.In recognition of his contribution to the field of 20th century Italian design, he was awarded the Compasso d'Oro ADI Lifetime Achievement in 2016.

Atelier A was a design company and enterprise founded on the principle of integrating art and design into everyday life. Active between 1968 and 1975, the initiative was conceived by painter and sculptor François Arnal, who called for a more multidisciplinary approach to design.

In its 1970 manifesto, written by art critic and philosopher Pierre Restany, Atelier A outlined its aims: ‘Painters, sculptors, young architects are not equipped today to produce the useful and beautiful forms which transform the daily decor of our life. Their creative power is therefore condemned to be exercised in the solitude of the workshop and in the abstraction of an isolated poetic research. Atelier A specifically wants to give these creators a chance, provide them with the opportunity to produce prototypes of shapes, to participate in industrial aesthetic or decoration programs, to develop shows or audiovisual environments.’

Specialising in everyday design objects, the group included, among others, Jean-Michel Sanejouand (Symetrique Rocking Chair and Ottoman, 1971); France Bertin (‘Mouchoir’ Coffee Table, 1970s) and François Arnal himself (Chair Z, 1971). The group disbanded following Arnal’s return to painting, and remains associated with the technological and aesthetic turning point in designs of the period.

ABM, or Alfredo Bianchi Milano, was founded in 1910 by the eponymous Alfredo Bianchi, an Italian designer. Best known for their production of lamps, for over a century ABM has operated as a family business in the hands of Alredo’s son Ermanno Bianchi and now his grandchildren, Antonio and Roberta Bianchi. Since 1969, the company has been renamed Bilumen – a portmanteau of Bianchi and Lumen, the measure of light – and remains one of Italy’s leading light design and manufacturing companies.

Initially famed for their production of chandeliers, from the 1950s ABM began to diversify its designs to harness the latest developments in contemporary Italian style and manufacturing technologies. The Selene lamp is illustrative of this new direction, evoking the high mid-century modernist style. Named after the goddess of the moon, this rare item is highly reminiscent of the Eclisse lamp by Vico Magistretti, and its shape and functionality echo the Space Age style that influenced the design of the era. While the company was renamed Bilumen during the production period of these models, the pressed ABM on the plastic bottom remained, a reminder of its design provenance.

While a specific designer has never been attributed to the Selene lamp, among the names who worked for ABM and Bilumen included Sergio Asti, Isao Hosoe and Giorgiona Castiglioni.

Opposing the trend for mass consumerism, nowadays Bilumen is renowned for offering a bespoke design service, believing in a future trend towards product personalisation.

Cini Boeri was an award-winning industrial designer and architect, and notably one of the few female Italian designers to enjoy international success in the postwar era. Regularly described as a pioneering force in her field, many of her designs – acclaimed for their timeless style and focus on functionality - are still in production today.

Born in 1924, Boeri graduated from the Polytechnic University in Milan – the city where she spent her whole life – in 1951. After stints working for influential architects such as Giò Ponti and Marco Zanuso, she founded her own studio in 1963. ‘I would like architecture to design joy’ she exclaimed. Her work is celebrated for its emphasis on the psychological connection between humans and their environment. She believed that beauty was the result of function, and strove to create work of lasting value.

Boeri focused on industrial design as well as civil architecture. She was best known for her revolutionary modular seating designs, among them (all for Artflex): Bobo Lounge (1967), the first exclusively foam Monobloc seat; the polyurethane Serpentone lounge (1971), which could be sold by the metre; and the Strips series (1972) offering endless options for configuration, which earned her the Compasso d’Oro – one of many prestigious prizes she received throughout her career.

‘Cini invented pop objects and architectures,’ reflected her son, architect Stefano Boeri, after his mother’s death at 96 in 2020. ‘Never boring and presumptuous and at the same time extremely elegant – an almost impossible blend that Cini knew how to create.’ With pieces in and among MoMA, New York and The Louvre, Paris, Boeri’s legacy continues to influence the design world.

Olaf Von Bohr was one of Austria’s most prolific designers of the 20th century. Born in 1927 in Salzburg, he was part of a generation who took an inventive approach to design, incorporating materials such as plastic, metal and even rattan and bamboo in his 1950s series of coat racks.

Active in Milan, Von Bohr started his career working in the studio of architectural visionary Gio Ponti (1953-55) and later with the innovative designer Alberto Rosselli (1954-64). Among his projects during this time was the office redevelopment of the La Rinascente department store.

From bookshelves to table lamps, record-holders to folding breakfast trays (for Kartell), Von Bohr’s contribution to industrial design was extensive. He became a member of ADI, the Association for Industrial Design, co-founded by his early mentor Rosselli.

Rodolfo Bonetto was an illustrious figure in mid-century Italian modern design who made a unique contribution to the field. Famously (and uncommonly) self-taught, he abandoned a successful career as a jazz drummer to devote himself to the profession of designer and was celebrated for a broad range of work that merged artistic flair with a marked attention to the technical.

Born in Milan in 1929, Bonetto started his own business specialising in industrial design in 1958. Gifted in technical drawing, he began drawing instruments for cars for Veglia Borletti, as initially inspired by his famous car driver uncle Felice Bonetto. This was the first of numerous collaborations that would also include Olivetti, Fiat, Voxon and Nordica, for whom Bonetto would design objects as diverse as ski boots, telephones, dashboards and watches – marking him out from the majority of Italian designers who were focused on furnishings.

‘Design is like a butterfly held in your hands. If you hold it too tightly, it dies; it you let it go, it flies away,’ Bonetto once observed. Fascinated by the materials and process of design, he would approach his work from the perspective of both manufacturer and user. His passion extended to teaching, which included posts at institutions such as Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm and Isia in Rome.

Bonetto was appointed President of the Industrial Design Association (ADI), twice, and the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). He was eight times awarded the prestigious Compasso d’Oro, including once posthumously - in recognition of his legacy as one of the founding fathers of Italian design.

One of the great Italian designers of the 20th century, few match the enduring legacy of Osvaldo Borsani’s career. Celebrated worldwide for his attention to both the practical and aesthetic elements of design, he was renowned for his precise, technical and innovative approach.

Born in 1911 in Italy, Borsani studied Beaux-Arts at Accademia di Brera in Milan and then architecture at the city’s Politecnico, graduating in 1937. While there, he was awarded the silver medal for his design project with Casa Minima at the fifth Triennale of Milan – a sign of his future success.

The post-war period saw Borsani develop friendships with artists such as Lucio Fontana, which instilled the importance of treating furnishing and interior architecture as art forms. Initially creating fine cabinetry with European Art Deco influences for his father’s business, in 1953 Borsani co-founded a design firm, Tecno, with his twin brother, Fulgenzio.

At Tecno, Borsani harnessed the latest technology developments to create modernist works of great comfort and style. Hallmark designs included the D70 sofa bed (1954) that can assume approximately twenty positions and the Graphis office furniture system (1968) with Eugenio Gerli that came into vogue worldwide, selling millions of copies. The firm also produced pieces of furniture by other eminent designers such as Gio Ponto and Mario Bellini.

Testament to his future- and research-orientated approach, in 1970 Borsani introduced the Centro Progetti Tecno, a collaborative design laboratory for new product development. With works on display today at the likes of MoMA, NY and the V&A in London, his important place in modern design history is beyond doubt.

Otto Brauer was one of the leading Danish glass designers of the 20th century. He is best known for his time spent working at Holmegaard, the country’s oldest and largest glassworks company, between the 1940s and 1970s.

Born in 1911, Brauer’s prolific and popular body of work were the result of an early start working in the glass industry. He began working as a glassblower at Holmegaard at only 14 years of age, and by the age of 24 was appointed a Master. One of his most iconic creations was the ‘Gulvvase’ (Floor vase) series for the company, first designed in the late 1950s. Produced in various sizes, they were characterised by their unique bottle shape, a typically mid-century geometric silhouette and vibrant expression. Throughout the 1960s, the designs harnessed the popularity of Pop style to become increasingly warm and colourful, including yellows and reds with a white-cased interior. Later designs introduced contrasting-coloured balls on top of the vases.

Though little is documented about Brauer, his esteemed vases are familiar and sought internationally. Many of his works are on display at leading museums and institutions worldwide, including across Scandinavia as well as the Victoria & Albert in London. Since Brauer passed away in 1984, his pieces continue to sell for record-breaking amounts at auction.

A prominent force in the field of post-war Italian modern design, Anna Castelli Ferrieri is best known for her influence in the use of plastics as a mainstream design material. She initially trained as an architect at the Milan Polytechnic Institute, after which she worked at the office of Italian architect Franco Albini before founding her own architectural practice.

Her particular impact on the world of design began with her marriage to chemical engineer Giulio Castelli, who in 1949 founded Kartell – one of Italy’s principal furniture and lighting companies, notable for its fusion of plastic and design. While continuing successfully with her architectural projects – she was a co-organiser of the Congrès Internationale d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), a correspondent for "Architectural Design" magazine and co-founder the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI) – in 1966 she became a Design Director at Kartell.

As part of this role, she was instrumental in attracting designers of the highest calibre (among them Joe Colombo and Richard Sapper) while herself making her own creative mark. Experimenting with different kinds of plastic, she designed some of the company’s most innovative and iconic objects, including the Componibili – stacking module storage pieces that remain among the best-sold items ever at Kartell. In 1982, she created the first table to be made of entirely injection moulded plastic; she also pioneered a number of material combinations, such as metal and polyurethane and other marbleised plastic creations.

That her furniture is still made by the company today is reflective of the enduring skill, elegance and popularity of her designs.

Achille Castiglioni was one of the most influential protagonists across the full spectrum of mid-century Italian modern design. He achieved particular success in partnership with his fellow designer brother Pier Giacomo, creating works that emphasised the shared importance of imagination and functionality.

The son of a prominent Milanese sculptor, the creative-spirited Achille studied classics and the arts before graduating as an architect from the city’s Politecnico in 1944. From there, he joined his brothers’ design firm Studio Castiglioni, embarking on a prolific career that would see him collaborate with leading furniture companies such as Kartell, Alessi and Cassina.

An ingenious experimenter attentive to the technical and aesthetic importance of design, much of Castiglioni’s work – made in ‘symbiosis’ with Pier – has become iconic. This includes the Mezzadro stool and the Salla stool (Zanotta, 1957), both of which borrowed from elements of the Duchampian readymade, and the streetlight-like Arco Lamp which overcame the need for complicated wiring. His approach was problem-solving yet playful: ‘My method is to take out again and over again, until I will find the main design component.’

Castiglioni continued to design after his brother’s death in 1968, and for over two decades taught architecture at the Politecnico of Turin and Milan. He was a founding member of the Industrial Design Association (ADI) in 1956; received Honorary Degrees from the Royal College of Art, London (1987), and the Politecnico di Milano (2001); and won numerous awards, including the Compasso d’Oro eight times.

Castiglioni’s career was testament to his principle that ‘Design shouldn’t be trendy. Good Design should last over time, until it wears out.’

One of the most influential Italian designers of the 20th century, Joe Colombo’s furniture embraced functionality with a futuristic, dynamic style. As the designer would say: ‘Habits change; the interior of rooms has to change with them.’

Born in 1930, Colombo initially trained as architect at the Politecnico di Milano, where his contemporaries included the founders of the Movimento Nucleare – a group of painters who sought to embrace the tensions of the modern nuclear age in their work. Channelling these themes into his career as a designer, Colombo opened his own studio in 1962. There he began pioneering modular designs in furniture, lighting, interiors and glassware that were bold in colour and form, inspired by the Space Race era of science fiction films.

Though Colombo’s work demonstrated a strong attentiveness to the visual impact of design, he was preoccupied by the importance of functionality above everything – preferring to think of his objects as items of ‘equipment’ rather than ‘furniture’.

Often making use of the emerging materials of the time, Colombo was also the first designer to use moulded plastic. The result was a body of furniture that captured and defined the spirit of the era, which earned Colombo the Compasso d’Oro and has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions. These have included the 2006 Vitra Design Museum retrospective, Inventing the Future – a title befitting the enduring popularity and historical significance of Colombo’s work.

Capturing the spirit of late 1960s design, the adjustable table lamp, Elmo, was designed and produced by Imago DP Milano in 1971. The lamp was featured in 'Luce: Lampade 1968-1973: il nuovo design italiano’, an examination of lighting design by Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari. They described the lamp as part of a group of "pill-shaped lamps" that "highlights one of the forms typical of the 1960s, based on the elementary geometry of solids, and brightly coloured". Made of metal, the lamp was also designed in bold shades of blue and yellow.

Adalberto Dal Lago’s career spans architecture, design and an academic career teaching and writing in both fields. He has published many works on these topics, curated numerous design exhibitions and served on the jury of several eminent design competitions – cementing his international status as of the leading surviving names and authorities on Italian 20th-century architecture and design.

Born in Milan in 1937, Dal Lago initially studied for a Degree in Architecture at the city’s Politecnico. It was here that he launched his academic career, first as an Assistant Professor of Decoration, before becoming chair of interior design and then of the elements of composition.

In parallel, since 1963 he has had an international freelance career as an architect and designer. This has varied from large-scale projects - such restoring a national heritage building at Piazzale Michelangelo and the Italian plants of the Fiat, Alfa, Lancia and Ferrari Group - to designing domestic objects for brands such as Bilumen, Esperia and Vistosi Italy.

Dal Lago’s Drive lamp for Bieffeplast-Francesconi was first created in 1974. Decorative and playful, it forms part of a series of wall and table lamps all made from plastic, rubber and safety glass. The lamp’s design echoes the industrial movement and the Space Age style, both the archetypal aesthetics for the time.

Dal Lago’s versatility has also extended to editing the Rassegna-Modi di abitare oggi magazine and the Technology and Design section of L’architettura-Cronache e Storia, published by Bruno Zevi.

One of the most iconic artists of the twentieth century, Salvador Dalí is arguably Spain’s most famous Surrealist. A controversial and colourful figure, he assimilated a number of artistic styles, though became most well-known for his explorations of subconscious imagery.

Dalí was born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain, and trained as an art student in Madrid and Barcelona. In the late 1920s, he was marked by two discoveries: firstly, Sigmund Freud’s writings into the unconscious; and secondly, his affiliation with the Paris Surrealists who sought to establish new creative processes that ‘activated’ the visual language of the unconscious mind.

Dalí’s strange, dreamlike compositions sought to disorientate the viewer and prompt new ways of seeing. Though his political views resulted in his estrangement from the Surrealist Group, its principles remained central to his work as he developed an international reputation and branched out into set design, fashion and film. Inspired by Renaissance artists such as Raphael, he developed a more academic style of painting and developed his own modern iconographies. Fascinated by the power of symbolism, his lobsters, eggs and clocks (among others) would later inspire the Pop Artists.

Dalí’s work has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives, including at: the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1941); the Palazzo Pallavicini in Rome (1964); institutions across Tokyo, Nagoya and Kyoto (1964); and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1980). The Salvador Dalí Museum in Cleveland was inaugurated in 1971. He died in Figueras in 1989.

Tom Dixon rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as the famously maverick self-taught British designer. Currently Creative Director of his eponymous brand specialising in lighting, furniture and accessories, he has established a worldwide reputation as one of the leading figures in 21st century design.

Inspired by the transformational power of design, Dixon made his name in the 1980s with a line in welded savage furniture made from manipulated found objects and industrial materials. During this period he set up ‘Space’, a creative think-tank and shopfront space for himself and other creative designers to explore ideas collaboratively. Working ‘instinctively rather than cerebrally’, his design remains centred on personal expression.

Arguably his most iconic piece is the S-chair made for Cappellini (1991). Now an emblem of contemporary design, the chair – made a year after his Bird lounge chair (1990) – is representative of Dixon’s ability to turn an artisanal product into an authentic industrial masterpiece. The model can today be found in permanent collections such as MoMA in New York.

Aside from founding the Tom Dixon brand in 2002, he served as Creative Director of Habitat for a decade, during which he successful rejuvenated the brand. His collections are a biannual fixture at the Milan international furniture fair and the London Design Festival. With an already-canonised placed in the history of modern design, his works have been acquired by some of the most prestigious museums across the globe, including the V&A Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

One of the major European artists of the twentieth century, Jean Dubuffet was a prolific painter and sculptor who founded the Art Brut movement. Proclaiming himself ‘anti-culture’, he embraced the aesthetics of ‘low art’ made by children, the mentally ill and other outsiders, championing a more authentic approach to image-making.

Born in 1901 to a wealthy bourgeoisie family in Le Havre, Dubuffet’s early career was spent working as an industrial draftsman and later in the family wine business. He committed to becoming an artist in 1942, and was influenced by artists André Breton and Paul Klee as well as Hans Prinzhorn’s book on psychopathic art. He believed that the everyday life of ordinary people contained more art and poetry than did so-called ‘great paintings’. In 1945, he began collecting work by untutored individuals, preferring their direct method of artmaking, and in 1949 published the Art Brut (‘raw art’) manifesto, proclaiming the superiority of this work over traditionally accepted conventions of art.

Dubuffet’s art spanned outdoor sculptures, theatrical props known as the ‘practicables’, as well as canvases that incorporated crude and unorthodox materials. From 1962, he produced a series of iconic works that used a palette of only red, white, black and blue, inspired by his ballpoint doodles – typical of his assimilation of everyday culture within his practice.

Dubuffet has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide, including major retrospectives at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2001) and the Barbican Gallery in London (2021). He died in 1985 in Paris.

An enfant terrible of the design world, Louis Durot is a French sculptor and chemical engineer. His bold creative flair and technological expertise resulted in a unique and often unpredictable body of work, one that gained worldwide traction.

Born in Paris in 1939, he studied mathematics at the Faculté des Sciences and in 1963 began to work as an engineer at Equipel. At this time, he began to make friends in the art world, uniting figures from a variety of disciplines to form an artists commune. He eventually became acquainted with Nouveau Realist sculptor César, whom he helped to master the technique of working with polyurethane foam – and eventually began creating his own out of this material.

In the 1970s, Durot set up his own studio space and began creating sculptures inspired by fantastical ‘alien’ life, mushrooms and carnivorous plants – characteristic of his fertile and quirky imagination. While signing with American Colloid and Zolpan, he also began to take on more creative independent projects - from designing furniture to an inflatable sculpture for the French Pavilion in Osaka (a project that was never realised). A brief spell in prison in the 1980s prompted a shift in Durot’s practice towards a Pop style. Inspired by spirals, feet and lips, he designed a limited series of erotic and fetishistic chairs including the now-famous Sexy Feet armchair.

Durot’s creations received an international audience; he has been widely exhibited in museums, retrospectives and salons across Europe, the USA and Asia, where he has also given course in Fine Arts.

Mikaela Dörfel is a Finnish designer who specialises in tableware collections. Influenced by her Scandinavian design heritage, her work is known for its clarity of idea, style and execution. Combining high individuality with a timeless elegance, her work has earned her international recognition.

Born in 1962, Dörfel studied Industrial Design at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg where she has since been based. She began worked as Design Manager at Rosenthal AG, which gave her a strong foundational understanding in the importance of materials and branding: ‘With a clear line for the brand’ is her credo. There, she specialised in porcelain and tableware, both of which have remained central to her practice. In 1997, she set up her own studio, Dörfel-Design, where she designs products for leading companies worldwide, such as WMF, Stelton and Menu and RAK.

Dörfel’s emphasis is as much on function as innovation, inspired by Scandinavian form and natural elements such as water. ‘I am always looking for a clear structure and a consequent basic principle in all objects,’ she says. ‘The basic idea has to be right but real quality is a matter of details.’ The result are products that are celebrated for their longevity and evoke emotion and connection in the consumer.

Among Dörfel’s prizes include the Red Dot Award, IF Award, Good Design Award, Chicago, and the German Design Award. Since 2017 she also lectures as visiting professor at Burg Giebichenstein, University of Art and Design in Halle.

Reinhoud D’Haese was a Flemish graphic artist and sculptor. A member of the European avant-garde CoBrA movement, he went on to develop his own unique aesthetic of fairytale forms, many of which have been exhibited worldwide. From 1960, he switched to using only his first name.

Reinhoud was born in 1928 and initially trained as a goldsmith, studying at the Ecole d’Architecture et des Arts Decoratifs in Brussels. Here, he became acquainted with Pierre Alechinsky, meeting other members of CoBrA – a movement based on principles of spontaneity, experiment and often inspired by children’s drawings. He made his first works of art in metal as part of this group, four of which were shown at the famous 1951 CoBrA exhibition in Liège.

After the group disbanded, Reinhoud worked as a blacksmith and made custom ironwork, soon breaking through as an artist in his own right. He won the Young Belgian Sculpture prize in 1958, and over the ensuing decades created works of art in various kinds of metal, many of them taking monstrous, human or vegetable forms.

Reinhoud’s genre of fantastical realism – partly inspired by his CoBrA beginnings – was best epitomised by Reinhoud’s small population of mystical figures kneaded in bread. Based on recognisable motifs, his sculptures represent different archetypes spanning across the scope of the human psyche, alluding to surrealistic motifs such as the bird and mask.

Reinboud’s work was enriched by his worldwide travels and teaching, and he produced a series of lithographs and paintings aside from the sculptures for which he remains best known.

Creative duo Charles and Ray Eames are counted among the most significant designers in 20th-century America. As co-founders of the globally successful Eames Office in 1947, their boundless curiosity and experimentation made ground-breaking impact across numerous fields – from furniture and industrial design to architecture and the photographic arts.

Charles was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, where he studied architecture at Washington University. He caught the attention of Finnish art nouveau architect Eliel Saarinen, who offered him a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1938. It was here that he met Ray, a trained painter, and they married in 1941.

The duo became best known for their work on chairs made from moulded plywood, which had earlier earned Charles and Eero Saarinen prizes at MoMA’s Organic Furniture Competition. With a mission statement to ‘to make the best for the most for the least,’ these chairs were marked by aesthetic integrity, comfort and affordability, typical of all Eames designs. Influential architectural critic Esther McCoy called it ‘the chair of the century’.

From office seating to coat racks, the Eameses treated all design as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. ‘We don’t ‘do’ art – we solve problems,’ Charles described of their approach. ‘The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem.’

A 2017 exhibition at Vitra Design Museum celebrated the vast, lifelong body of work produced by the Eameses, presenting them as the most successful design partnership in history. Their designs are on display in institutions worldwide, while their purpose-built, De Stijlian home in Los Angeles is celebrated as an architectural landmark symbolic of their important career.

Jan Ekselius is a Swedish furniture designer and manufacturer, best known for his Etcetera lounge chair (1970) – one of the most iconic and seminal pieces of the decade. The chair is regarded an important part of Sweden’s design heritage and continues to be produced today.

The son of renowned designer Karl-Erik Ekselius – one of the originators of Scandinavian modern furniture – the younger Ekselius studied at Royal College of Art in London. It was here that he first designed Etcetera, initially as a prototype armchair as part of his graduate thesis. With further refinement, it was first exhibited at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in 1971, where it soon became a highly sought item of interior design furniture, synonymous with the expressive styles of the time.

Highly sculptural in form and with a striking silhouette, its construction is complex, made from a steel tube frame provided with spring-mounted elements and a continuous supported foam pad.

‘It all began when I discovered how elegantly and naturally elastic materials formed when stretched over a convex shape,’ Ekselius recalled of how the design came about. ‘When production started, we realised that the elastic fabric was difficult to use and I started to search for a replacing material. I eventually found a solution when Volvo invented their adjustable Pullmaflex back support.”

An emblem of high modernism, Etcetera is regularly represented in leading auction houses around the world, and has cemented Ekselius’ status as one of the key Swedish designers of the 20th century.

Floris H. Fiedeldij was one of the most progressive designers of the Dutch mid-century modernist movement. Trained at the Hague Academy of Visual Arts, he brought an entrepreneurial spirit to his career as a designer, and founded the Dutch design company Artimeta post-war. Focusing on modern lighting, furniture and metal objects, Artimeta achieved international and commercial success for its innovative outlook on design. Inspired by figures such as Mathieu Mategot and Serge Mouille, Fiedeldij’s series of side tables and table lamps throughout the 1950s and 60s were particularly popular, espousing a minimalist and stylish aesthetic.

Dan Flavin is a light artist whose fluorescent geometric installations pioneered a radical new art form. A celebration of colour and space, his work is variously influenced by the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Conceptualism, as summarised in his central belief: that ‘art is thought’.

Born in Jamaica, New York, in 1933, Flavin initially studied for the priesthood (he would later refer to his electric light assemblages as ‘icons’). Following a period in the US Air Force, he studied art in Korea and New York and began to make collages and paintings inspired by the Abstract Expressionist movement then prominent in his native city. Gradually incorporating lights onto his canvases, in 1963 he began to work with his signature fluorescent tubes and by 1968 had developed these sculptures into room-sized environments of light.

Through its emphasis on elementary forms and industrial materials, Flavin’s work adopts some of the primary principles of Minimalism. His installations were often site-specific, examining the relationship between sculptures and the rooms they inhabited, and became increasingly large in scale and complex.

Major retrospectives of Flavin’s work have been organized by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (1969), St. Louis Art Museum (1973), Kunsthalle Basel (1975), and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1989). He died in New York in 1996. Both the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin in 1999 and the Dia Foundation for the Arts in 2004 mounted major posthumous retrospectives of the artist’s work.

Synonymous with stylish mid-century modern design, Harvey Guzzini is an Italian lighting manufacturing company that rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. The family firm was founded in 1959 and made up of six brothers of the Guzzini family - Raimondo, Giovanni, Virgilio, Giuseppe, Adolfo and Giannunzio – who derived the name from the 1950 film Harvey.

Harvey Guzzini originally focused on the production of copper-plated decorative objects. By the time all the brothers joined in 1963, the firm began to produce pendant lighting, sconces and floor and table lamps – for which the business flourished and would become best known.

Characterised by minimalist stems, curved shades and bold use of yellow and orange colours, Harvey Guzzini’s lighting creations epitomised the style of the 1960s. Among their most iconic designs included the Mushroom Table Lamp (1965) by Luigi Massoni and Luciano Buttura, as well as the in-house designed Arc Floor Lamp (1968) and Toledo Table Lamp (1973) - each marked by a futurist charm influenced by the space and nuclear age.

From 1976, the firm concentrated principally on lighting made from acrylic and began to collaborate with Yugoslavian furniture producer Meblo to expand the scope of their designs.

In 1967, the firm exhibited in Paris at Domus: Formes Italiennes at the Galeries Lafayette. They subsequently opened a retail outlet in Milan, which continues to run fifty years later. While the firm has been variously renamed over the years – nowadays they are known as iGuzzini illuminazione – their significance and legacy in the field of Italian post-war design remains unchanged.

Makio Hasuike is a Japanese-born, Italian-based industrial designer who founded his eponymous studio Makio Hasuike & Co. in 1968. Working across product and graphic design, exhibitions and architecture, his innovative and solution-based approach to design has garnered an international consumer base.

Born in Tokyo in 1938, Hasuike studied at the city’s University of the Arts, graduating in 1962. He began his career working for Seiko, designing a set of clocks and timers for the Japanese capital’s Olympic games of 1964. He subsequently moved to Milan (then the design capital of the world) where he founded one of the country’s first industrial design studios.

At the heart of Hasuike’s work is an emphasis on authenticity, simplicity and pieces that combine beauty and function. Whether domestic stationary to household toiletries, he is passionate about the latest technological and ethical processes, and the social responsibility of design. ‘I want to improve the quality of life in a democratic way, exploring the power of industry and technology,’ he has observed. ‘We must take care not only of the aesthetic point of view but also of the cultural, social and environmental issues.’

Hasuike’s studio has worked with leading Italian and international companies, and nowadays operates alongside his architect daughter Naomi Hasuike. He has obtained numerous awards for his projects, including the Compasso d’Oro Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. His work has been displayed in institutions such as MoMA in New York, and he has taught at at the University of Industrial Design in Milan.

Known often simply as PH, Poul Henningsen was an integral Danish architect and designer of the early twentieth century. Passionate about the power of everyday design, he played a revolutionary contribution to the field of lighting, which he saw as a way of improving the home and work environment.

Born in 1896 in Ordrup, Henningsen showed an early aptitude for invention and variously trained in painting, architecture and mechanical engineering. This gave him a grounding in the aesthetic, functional and technical elements of design. He began creating lamps in 1920 and also worked as a critic, writing about the relationship between societal problems and architecture, which his own work would aim to solve.

Henningsen’s lamp first gained acclaim in 1925, when the Paris Lamp for Louis Poulsen won the Gold Medal at the city’s International Exhibition. Henningsen had sought a way to subdue the harshness of electric light while harnessing its potential to transform the mood and aesthetic of an interior. Celebrated for its innovative, glare-free distribution of light, its construction still shapes the way lamps are made a century later.

Henningsen later established a design partnership with Arne Jacobsen, with whom he fled Denmark during the Second World War. He continued to produce lamps throughout his career, and his PH5 Lamp in 1958 - a signature balance of function and form, technology and art – became the designer’s best-seller.

Variously honoured, awarded and exhibited worldwide, Henningsen’s lamps continue to be made within Denmark where they were selected into the Danish Culture Canon – described by the jury as ‘the symbol of Danishness and good taste’.

An enfant terrible among Swedish glassmakers, Ulrica Hydman Vallien was one of the country’s most popular designers. Best known for her use of unusual motifs in her work, she was celebrated for her playful spirit and exquisite craftsmanship. While her designs often rebelled against aesthetic conventions around glassmaking, a humorous and joyous approach endeared her to even the most fervent critics.

Born in 1938, Hydman Vallien studied at the ceramics department at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Upon graduating, she further honed her skills through her travels across Europe, the US and Mexico, eventually taking a job at the Åfors glassworks in 1963. It was here that, when asked to design an exclusive gift item, she designed the infamous ‘rat bowl’ – promptly rejected by the management – in protest at the conservative artist world.

Storytelling was at the heart of Hydman Vallien’s art, which spanned bowls, plates and glasses. From the 1980s, she helped to create unique design pieces for Kosta Boda - contentious in an age of mass consumer design – that were infused with narratives, personal experiences and feminine and biblical experiences: tulips and snakes were recurring motifs in her designs.

‘Glass is immediate, intense, demanding, and never moderate,’ she declared. ‘I paint and tell stories on and through transparent glass. Without rules or frameworks, governed by my emotions and instincts.’ Her clients included Ericsson, British Airways and Rörstrand, and her work can be seen at the V&A in London, the Chrysler Museum of Art and the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

Isamu Kenmochi was a Japanese modernist designer whose work and legacy has received critical worldwide acclaim. A key player in the development of Japanese industrial design after World War Two, his work fused the traditional material culture of Japanese furniture with Western modernist styles.

Kenmochi graduated from the Tokyo College of Industrial Arts in 1932. He began working for the government as part of the Industrial Arts Research Institute (IARI), developing his knowledge of material and construction as part of the country’s first generation of industrial designers.

The turning point in Kenmochi’s career arrived in 1950, when he met American designer Isamu Noguchi and together they collaborated on the Bamboo Basket Chair. Made of iron and bamboo, the chair combined elements of modern American design with the warmth and tactility of traditional craft, and was the prototype of what became known as Japanese Modern. Chairs themselves were symbols of westernisation, having only arrived in the country earlier that century.

After travelling around the US, Kenmochi founded the Japan Industrial Designers Association and became instrumental in establishing a new Post-War Design. His participation at the Brussels Universal Exhibition of 1958 brought him international attention: collaborating with Kunio Maekawa, he developed a Japanese pavilion that combined ancestral Japanese architectural forms with a modern style and structure. The Pavilion earned Kenmochi the Gold Medal and stood as a symbol of his pioneering hybrid style.

Further awards including the G-Mark Prize and the Mainichi Design Prize, and today Kenmochi’s work is included in collection such as MoMA, New York.

Rodney Kinsman was a British designer responsible for creating classic items of mid-century modernist furniture. Combining simplicity and functionality, the underlying technical conception of his designs received celebration worldwide and he was a champion of the importance of material.

Kinsman was born in London in 1943, where he attended the Central School of Art. After graduating in 1965, he founded OMK Design with Jurek Olejnik and Bryan Morrison, with whom he launched the F Range chair (1966), a block of foam plastic covered in vinyl. Its stylish aesthetic set a precedent for Kinsman’s future design, but his work increasingly stood out for its emphasis on technical construction.

Arguably Kinsman’s most successful piece was the ‘Omstak’ chair (1971) for Bieffeplast, made of moulded sheet steel coated with epoxy resin. The holes in its material actually enhanced its stability, and the chair was regarded as the epitome of 1970s high-tech design.

Through the 1980s, designs such as the Vienna chair (1984) and the Tokyo line (1985) marked a stark shift towards a more rationalist aesthetic – opposing the new fashion for the decorative and colourful as popularised by Ettore Sottsass’ Memphis Group. A maverick of his own, Kinsman worked to his own design philosophy: that of the logical art of furniture, and the need to develop enduring aesthetics that would prevail through changes in taste.

Kinsman was made a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art. His Omstak chair is still in production today and serves as an ongoing memento of his talent.

Shiro Kuramata was part of a generation of creatives who revolutionised Japanese post-war design. An architect and industrial designer, he was celebrated worldwide for its poetic elevation of everyday objects. Steadfast in his belief that ‘Enchantment should also be considered a function,’ his work combines a surreal, minimalist and experimental vision.

Born in Tokyo in 1934, Kuramata graduated from Tokyo Polytechnic High School in 1953. After training as a cabinet maker and working for furniture producer Teikoku, he opened his own studio in 1965. There, he worked alongside important creative figures such as architect Tadao Ando, artist Jiro Takamatsu and fashion designer Issey Miyake – who approached Kuramata to design his first retail store in 1976. Defying the traditional principles of fashion presentation, his reinterpretation of the relationship between form and function introduced his revolutionary approach to a global audience.

Drawn to the possibilities offered by new technologies and industrial materials, Kuramata used materials such as acrylic, glass and steel mesh, experimenting with the effects of weight and light. Among his most famous designs include his chairs: ‘How High the Moon’ (1986), a philosophical meditation on form; and ‘Miss Blanche’, a transparent resin chair containing synthetic roses, named after the protagonist in Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

After meeting fellow visionary Ettore Sottsass in 1981, Kuramata was invited to join the seminal Memphis Group – a movement that sought to reinvigorate modern design with colour, magic and surprise. His works can be found in international permanent collections, including MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Josep Lluscà is one of Spain’s most lauded industrial designers, whose work specialises in lighting and furniture, notably chairs. Since founding his own studio in 1972, Lluscà has worked with a variety of leading Spanish and international companies, and his elegant and avant-garde designs have received numerous awards.

Lluscà was born in Barcelona in 1948, where he studied Industrial Design at the city’s Eina school. Despite furthering his studies at L'École des Arts et Métiers in Montreal, he has spent his career living and working in Spain where his designs have been noted for their strong national aesthetic identity, often reflecting the influence of other famous Catalan designers such as Antonio Gaudí.

Lluscà rose to prominence during the 1980s: a time when the rise of the postmodernist aesthetic often saw originality take precedence over functionality. However, Lluscà’s pragmatic approach countered these prevailing design movements: ‘A chair is a chair and a tortilla is a tortilla’, he says. Interested in the relationship between art and science, he is also environmentally minded, and creates work that integrates effectively into its surroundings.

Lluscà has worked with prestigious companies such as Antonio Puig Perfumes, Rosenthal and WMF. He has won a number of prestigious design awards internationally, the ADI-FAD Delta de Oro, the Industrial Design Excellence Award from the US, and the National Design Award (1990). As well as working as a designer, he also returned to his alma mater to teach as a Professor, and has been a member of the Design Board for the Catalan Regional Government.

Upheld as one of the founding fathers of Italian modern design, Vico Magistretti was one of the country’s most highly respected designers of the last century. Steadfast throughout his career in his belief that ‘There is no excuse for bad design’, he was celebrated as a master of the art of simplicity and elegance.

Magistretti was born into a notable family of Milanese architects in 1920. During the Second World War, he fled to Switzerland where he met maestro and mentor Ernesto Nathan Rogers, a pivotal Italian architect who founded Studio BBPR and whose humanist aesthetic would inspire many of Magistretti’s later designs. Upon returning to Milan, Magistretti studied at the city’s Politecnico and joined his father’s architectural firm in 1945.

Working on modernist furniture items and architectural projects in the postwar years, Magistretti always aspired for designs of the highest artistry and concept – whether mass-produced or not. His trademark essentialism was reflected in designs that were distilled and unfussy, yet still striking and full of character. Pieces such as his breakout Carimate chair were often noted for combining rural simplicity with urban sophistication. ‘To be truly contemporary, one must always have a hand in the past and a hand in the future,’ he said.

Well-regarded in his contribution to the field of modern design, Magistretti received two Compasso d'Oro awards in 1967 and 1979, and the Gold Medal of the Chartered Society of Industrial Artists & Designers in 1986. He also held two prestigious professorships at the Royal College of Arts in London and the Domus Academy in Milan, and his work has been acquired by museums such as MoMA New York and the Victoria & Albert in London.

Angelo Mangiarotti was one of Italy’s most highly esteemed and prolific designers of the twentieth century. At the heart of his practice was an unwavering commitment to designs that respected the characteristic of his materials and responded to the needs of the consumer.

Born in Milan in 1921, Mangiarotti graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1948 and subsequently moved to the United States. There, he held a visiting professorship at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (he continued to teach throughout his life) and befriended famous architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Bauhaus Director) and Konrad Wachsmann, all of whom had an influence on his lifelong body of work.

Returning to Milan, Mangiarotti opened an architectural firm with Italian architect Bruno Morasutti. The pair worked on a series of industrial, residential and cultural institutions, before Mangiarotti began to work independently in the 1960s. His inventive nature and love of craftsmanship saw him become a leading light in furniture designs that took an avant-garde sculptural form.

Comprising a range of materials, Mangiarotti’s most famous designs included his ‘Saffo’ and ‘Lesbo’ glass-blown lamps (1967) for Artemide. His signature stone and marble ‘Eros’ tables (1971) marked a milestone in furniture that could be assembled without joints or clamps; their ‘gravity joints’ enabled the legs to be held in place by the weight of the tabletop. Celebrated for their powerful sculptural presence, these pieces anticipated the robust postmodern aesthetic and continue to resonate in a contemporary interior.

Lyson Marchessault (b.1981) is a Canadian-British multidisciplinary artist based in London, where she produces work under the name of La Roche Pottery. Working predominantly with clay, nature and communities, she is inspired by ancient techniques and forms, and incorporates folklore, myth and rituals into her pieces. Part of her practice also involves ecology, fermentation and regenerative art, interested in defining a connection to the self, the earth, and living.

Marchessault works with found clay and other materials, collected by hand from various sites in the UK. This deeply intimate process grounds her work within our collective history, embedded in the layers of the earth and to our ancestors. An interconnection of plants, soil and people, each piece explores the idea of clay as an embodied memory of time.

Lyson Marchessault lives and works in London.

Raul Barbieri and Giorgio Marianelli were Italian designers and architects who co-founded the Barbieri e Marianelli Architetti studio, a 15-year partnership which met with commercial and critical success. Working during the height of the vibrant Memphis movement of the 1980s, their creations nevertheless retained elements of functional elegance that had characterised the designs of earlier decades.

Both graduates of the Politecnico di Milano, the duo became acquainted in 1968 at the Olivetti Industrial Design Department directed by Ettore Sottsass (founder of the Memphis Group). Their studio was established in 1974 and together their work took the form of playful, colourful reinventions of traditional domestic items and household furnishings.

Their inaugural collaboration was the Coriandoli collection for Zuchetti, a tap design that represented a pre-minimalist style. Together they also signed some of the first, iconic Rexite projects – among them the Aiuto coat stand (1982), the Safe Tray ashtray (1977) and the Cribbio waste basket (1981), made from a single perforated sheet of metal. Further standout items included the Bikini lamp (1980) and the FLU desk lamp (1982), both for Tronconi and notably pared down in design for their time.

The designers parted ways in 1989, both to launch their own practices, but their period of collaboration marked a defining era in late twentieth-century Italian design. Marianelli passed away in 1998, while Barbieri continues to operate his own architectural studio in Milan. Concentrating on architecture, corporate identity, and design, he collaborates with famous design schools and has taught at key European institutions.

A pivotal member of the Belgian Surrealists, Marcel Mariën was an artist, essayist and filmmaker. Though his artistic production was wide-ranging, he is best known for his surrealist photography, which often depicted the female body with strange objects or in absurd situations.

Mariën was born in Antwerp in 1920. Inspired by René Magritte whose work he saw in an exhibition in 1937, he subsequently travelled to Brussels to work as an apprentice for the painter. He would remain a close friend of Magritte for two decades, and went on to publish the very first monograph on the artist in 1942. He was a long-term chronicler of Surrealist activities and materials, publishing a chronological record of all the movement’s writings between 1924 and 1950.

A restless and colourful character, Mariën spent time as a soldier and a sailor, and lived in New York and China where he worked as a translator. Among his attempts to challenge conventional attitudes was his 1959 film The Imitation of Cinema, which caused a scandal through its combination of religious and sexual imagery. A lifelong prankster in the vein of Marcel Duchamp, humour and wordplay remained key elements of his work. In 1980, he returned to creating surrealist photographs and became a prolific artist.

Mariën’s work is featured in collections all over the world, including the Tate Modern in London, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and MoMA in New York. He died in Brussels in 1993.

Elio Martinelli was an Italian lighting designer and founder of the Martinelli Luce lighting company, still in business today. With a background in interior design, Martinelli’s lamps were noted not just for their mid-century modern aesthetic, but also their pioneering use of materials – including, most famously, plastic.

Trained as a set designer in Florence, Martinelli developed his career in his hometown of Lucca. While designing interiors of shops, hotels and restaurant, in the 1950s he founded his eponymous brand. Characterised by a rational and expressive style, his lamps were inspired by nature and organic geometric shapes.

Harnessing materials such as methacrylate for the first time, Martinelli’s lighting designs quickly garnered praise and success. Capturing the spirit of the age, his standout pieces included the chic space-age table lamps Serpente (1965), Cobra (1968) and Foglia (1969), all designed for the Martinelli Luce brand. Gaining worldwide recognition among design circles, Matinelli was invited by the eminent Italian architect Gio Ponti to participate in the first edition of the international design exhibition, Eurodomus, in Turin in 1966 – and he went on to show at the following three editions.

Martinelli continued to work daily in his studio until his passing in 2004. His company continues to operate with his family at the helm, while many of his original models are now featured in such permanent collections as MoMA in New York. The result is that Martinelli’s original and state-of-the-art vision continues to live on.

André Masson was a French artist whose work spanned painting, sculpture, illustration, design and writing. Born at the dawn of modernism in 1896, his work has been variously tied to its associated movements, from Cubism to Expressionism - but it is with the Surrealist genre that he remains most closely associated.

After training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and a traumatic period fighting in the First World War, Masson became one of the original members of André Breton's Surrealist Group (1924-29). There, he produced automatic drawings and works that explored the effects of chance, flinging sand onto his canvases. He was also deeply inspired by nature and landscape imagery, which recurs throughout his work.

While Masson had an on-off relationship with Breton's Surrealist Group, he continued to experiment with automatism. The practice came to influence the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism, after Masson met a young Jackson Pollock while in exile in the US during the Second World War. At this time, his own work was becoming increasingly abstract characteristic of his expansive, ever-evolving oeuvre. An internationally acclaimed and exhibited artist, Mason's first major retrospective took place at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1941. Additional major solo exhibitions later followed, including presentations at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1964); Stedelik Museum, Amsterdam (1964); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1976); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1976-77): Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976-77): Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1981); and the Hayward Gallery, London (1987). He died in 1987 in Paris.

Giancarlo Mattioli was a designer, architect and urban planner who rose to prominence during the golden age of Italian design in the 1950s and 1960s. Among the many successes of his career, his crowning glory was the stylish Nesso Table Lamp, now part of the collection at New York’s MoMA.

Demonstrating an early aptitude for creativity, Mattioli - born in Bologna in 1933 - developed a passion for art and pen drawing while at school. He graduated in architecture in Florence in 1961, and subsequently founded the Città Nuova (the Urban Architects Group) along with Pierluigi Cervellati, Umberto Maccaferri, Franco Morelli, Gianpaolo Mazzucato, and Mario Zaffagnini.

In 1965, Città Nuova participated in Studio Artemide Domus di Milano, a competition to find new lighting solutions. Spearheaded by Mattioli, the design proposed a subdued environmental light that concealed the appearance of a light bulb, and became known as Nesso. Stylish, colourful and innovative in both material and form, the lamp was made from injection-moulded plastic and its shape inspired by a jellyfish. The project was met with commercial success, and a smaller version of the lamp known as Nessino was later designed.

A designer of impressive versatility and ambition, Mattioli also worked on the late 1960 urban plans for Bologna. In the role of municipal architect, he collaborated on the plans for the historical centre, the industrial district and the new railway junction – a reflection of the power of his design vision.

Despite his relatively short career in furniture design, Mathieu Matégot was one of the most renowned French designers of the 1950s. Known for his attention to the tactility of design and an avant-gardist approach to materials and shapes, he is most famous for his use of Rigitulle, a signature feature of his work.

Born in Hungary in 1910, Matégot studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Budapest. He moved to Paris in 1931 and became part of the artistic circles of the day, though his first foray into design was cut short by the Second World War. It was, however, as a prisoner of war that he was requisitioned to work in a German mechanical engineering factory, where he was assigned to metalworking – and discovered his innovative Rigitulle technique.

This defining style involved combining metal tubing with a perforated metal sheet, where Rigitulle could be bent, folded and shaped. Like sculptures in suspense, the designs juxtaposed lightness of form with the weight of metal material. The 1950s saw Matégot found his own studio, the Société Matégot, with workshops in both Paris and Casablanca, where he produced numerous iconic designs using this technique: among them the three-legged Nagasaki Chair (1954) and the Copacabana armchair (1955). It was at this time that Matégot was awarded the Grand Prix d’Honneur at the Madrid International Exposition in 1953.

Matégot abandoned furniture in 1959 to concentrate on tapestry: the second field in which he was to become a pioneer in France. Nevertheless, his work continues to inspire modern designers and forms part of the collection at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and the Centre George Pompidou.

Carlo Moretti was an internationally renowned glassmaker who founded his eponymous brand in 1958. Working and living in Murano, Venice, his creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship epitomised the tradition of glassmaking for which the Italian island is known.

Born in 1934, Moretti trained in classical studies before following in his patrimonial footsteps to establish his own glassmaking studio. Eventually joined by his younger brother Giovanni, the elder Moretti was took on the role of designer and became known for avant-garde designs that celebrated bright colours and clean forms and surfaces.

Well-educated, well-travelled, and a knowledgeable lover of art and music, Moretti was widely inspired and relentlessly experimental. Using the latest manufacturing techniques, his work combined the century-old craft of mouth-blown Murano glass with the contemporary approach of Italian design.

From drinkware glasses to decorative vases, the fluid fragility of Moretti’s designs often embodied both the solid and liquid properties of their material. Catering to a clientele of fine art collectors, his pieces are often complete with a frosted or matt finish known as Satinato, and each one is numbered and signed.

Today, Moretti’s pieces can be found on display in twenty-three museums around the world, from Paris to New York. His work has a reputation for its popularity among discerning collectors. While Giovanni sold the business in 2013, their designs continue to be produced today, maintaining the characteristic elegance for which Carlo Moretti remains known.

Olivier Mourgue is a French industrial designer and artist, renowned internationally for his Pop Art and futuristic style. His work is iconic and has come to typify the 1960s modernist aesthetic, capturing the imagination of popular culture: he is perhaps best known for his Djinn collection of sofas, which were featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Mourgue studied comprehensively, reflected in the richness and breadth of his career. He was born in 1939 in Paris, where he obtained a degree in both Industrial Design from École Boulle and in Furniture Design from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

After graduating in 1960, Mourgue quickly became a pioneer in sculptural furniture design, particularly in seating. His designs were brightly-coloured, flexible and practical: he created removable covers that could be changed to give his pieces new identities. His Djinn series (1965) was the result of a collaboration with Airborne International, and consisted of jersey fabric stretched over structural steel frames, filled with polyether foam to create an anthropomorphic, alien-like modular form. The name derived from the genie in Arabian fairytales that could assume human or animal form.

Mourgue found continued success after launching his own studio in 1966, and in 1968 won the AID International Design Award for his Cubique Chair. He increasingly devoted himself to painting and in 1976 became a Professor in the School of Fine Arts in Brest. His pieces can be found at institutions such as the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the MoMa in New-York.

Jean Nouvel is an award-winning French architect, championed worldwide for the vision of his designs. Passionate about the relationship between art and design, and the importance of architecture in everyday life, he is best known for his work on buildings – but has also produced objects and interior furnishings.

‘Art should be created for life, not for the museum,’ is Nouvel’s mantra. Inspired by drawing classes at school, he trained as an architect at the École nationale supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris. He went on to design exhibits at the Bienniale de Paris and became a leading figure in intellectual debates about architecture in the capital, founding both Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l’Architecture (1977).

Gaining renowned for his design of buildings such as the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the Arab World Institute and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, in 2008 Nouvel was awarded the Pritzer Prize – widely considered the world’s premier architectural prize.

Nouvel’s belief that ‘each new situation requires a new architecture’ translates to the unique experience he brings to his design objects. His recent lamp for Nemo Lighting, On Lines (2018), brings an uplifting arrangement of colour, transparency and form to allow for infinite configurations. ‘A game of coloured surfaces… everybody imagines his own skyline and his coloured lights. Blurry, contrasting, pure, rhythm, cold, warm, erotic… Everyone gets lost depending on situations and desires,’ he says.

As Nouvel’s prolific work continues, he has been the subject of retrospectives at the Pompidou (2001) and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2005).

Yki Nummi is considered one of the most remarkable mid-century Scandinavian designers. Versatile and talented, his household designs from the 1950s to the 1970s quickly became international favourites that contributed to making Finnish design famous all over the world.

Born in China in 1925 to a missionary family, the multi-gifted Nummi took his studies in Finland. His first degree was in mathematics and physics, after which he studied decorative painting at the Institute of Applied Arts, Helsinki. This diverse educational background gave Nummi a firm theoretical foundation, and a sensitivity to the relationship between matter, light and colour that served him throughout his career.

Originally hired as a lamp designer for the Finnish Stockmann-Orno Luminaire factory from 1950-1975, Nummi designed hundreds of light fixtures during this period. He became a pioneer in the use of acrylic, drawn to its malleability and its unique diffusion of light. His most famous designs included the Modern Art table lamp (1955), so-called after it was acquired by MoMA within two years of its creation, and his Space Age-inspired ‘Skyflyer’ (or ‘Lokki’) lamp, for which he was awarded a prize at the Milan Triennal. Both are classics in the history of modern lighting, and characteristic of the refined and geometric simplicity of Nummi’s style.

In addition to his successful career in lighting design, Nummi was a respected colour expert; from 1958 to 1975, he managed the colouring service for Tikkurila and developed the original Joker colour chart. For his significant contribution to the field of design, he was awarded the prestigious Pro Finlandia prize in 1971.

Verner Panton was one of Denmark’s most influential furniture and interior designers of the 20th century. Though working at the forefront of modernism, his brightly coloured and futuristic pieces – many of which embraced new materials – marked a radical departure from classical modern design and came to epitomise 1960s innovation.

Born on the island of Funen in 1926, Panton studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Upon graduating in 1951, he served as an apprentice to Functionalist designer Arne Jacobsen, assisting with the execution of the iconic Ant Chair. Though inspired by Jacobsen’s organic style, he soon established his own avant-garde aesthetic characterised by bold colours and geometric shapes.

Panton brought his experimental and ebullient sensibility to a range of products, from lamps to textiles – but his chair pieces were his most pioneering. His Cone Chair and Heart Chair, both made of upholstered bent sheet metal, revolutionised the structure of a chair, while his Peacock chair defined the Pop style for which his designs became loved world-over. Trialling materials such as polyurethane foam and steel-wire framing, his 1960 stacking Panton Chair was the first to ever be produced from a single piece of moulded plastic.

As Panton’s designs grew in scope, the early 1970s saw him develop all-encompassing room environments composed of fluid-formed modular seating made of foam and metal wire. He designed numerous exhibitions, and many of his best-loved furniture models are still in production today, at Vitra among other design houses.

Gianni Pareschi is an Italian industrial designer of the post-war period, whose work is synonymous with the aesthetic shifts in mid-century design. Working to the mantra that ‘Quality is forever’, his successful international career is ongoing, and many of his pieces belong in museum collections.

Born in Milan in 1940, where he graduated from the city’s Polytecnico in 1965, Pareschi initially aligned himself with the anti-design movement that was growing in momentum around Italy at the time. Opposed to the growing symbiosis between design and industry, Pareschi was one of numerous artists who was influenced by new radical expressions in art, politics and youth culture, encouraged to experiment with forms, symbols and connotations. In the late 1960s, he was part of Gruppo G14 alongside Umberto Orsoni and Gianfranco Fachetti, among others, and while most of their designs remained as prototypes, Pareschi’s later eye-catching designs reflect their influence. He later worked on the reorganisation of the ADI (Association of Industrial Design), helping to reshape the principles of design theory following his involvement during this period.

The 1970s saw Pareschi achieve success with his armchairs – Fiocco, Libro and Armadillo – characterised by unusual structural systems and now part of the collection at MoMA. He later co-founded the GP&CO studio in 1984 where he continues to work on industrial and domestic design projects, together with his son Mattia.

Gaetano Pesce is one of the reigning pioneers of twentieth-century Italian design, architecture and urban planning. Made across a prolific and influential career spanning five decades, his creative, innovative and ambitious body of work is testament to his simple guiding philosophy: ‘Design is a very powerful form of communication, a very important form of expression. In my opinion, it is an art.’ Despite his anti-establishments values, Pesce is regarded as one of the most progressive and visionary designers.

Born in La Spezia, Italy in 1939, Pesce studied architecture at the University of Venice, graduating in 1963. Early on he participated in Gruppo N., an early collective concerned with the psychological realisation of design. From here sprang Pesce’s interest in the function and form of objects from the perspective of human emotion and environment, which has remained at the core of each of his design and architectural projects.

From his iconic feminist Up chair, to his Organic building in Osaka, Japan, Pesce’s work fuses the poetic and the political. His industrial work for companies such as Cassina, B&B Italia and Vitra re-assert design as a social and cultural experience – of art as a creative product responding to the needs of our time. Drawn to contemporary materials such as resin, foam and plastic, he is most recently known for his work with casting techniques used to create objects such as the Fish Design series.

Still a leading light for young designers today, the socio-political element of Pesce’s work has gained a new significance in the 21st-century age of activism. 

One of the most influential Italian designers of the twentieth century, Giancarlo Piretti’s chair designs – for which he is most celebrated – have sold millions worldwide.

Born in Bologna in 1940, Piretti initially obtained a teaching degree in drawing and taught interior design at the city’s Art Institute from 1963 to 1970. While there, he also joined Castelli as a designer, creating home and office furnishings that established the Italian design company as a global front-runner in its field.

Piretti’s most well-known piece is the folding Plia chair. The design was first unveiled at the Fiera del Mobile in Milan in 1967 as ‘The symbol of a new era focused on plastic’. Its material combinations of a steel and polypropylene frame, ‘three-disc hinge’ and elegant functionality revolutionised the concept of a folding chair. With sales upward of seven million, Plia has garnered a cult popularity and is now recognised as a significant cornerstone of post-war Italian modern design – nowadays enjoying centre stage in MoMA NY’s design department.

Piretti’s designs have made a continued impact; after twelve years spent at Castelli, he worked with Emilio Ambasz on further award-winning designs including two series of ergonomic seating systems. In 1988, he introduced his Piretti Collection at the NeoCon in Chicago, which featured chairs with patented mechanisms that could be adjusted to the weight of the user. The Collection amassed awards from the UBD, the ASID, the Compasso d'Oro and the G-Mark.

Today, Piretti continues to bring his skill to the world of design; he lives and works in Bologna with his son, the designer Alessandro Piretti.

As co-founder of furniture and accessories Italian design company Rexite, Rino Pirovano has established himself as one of the country’s foremost commercial designers. Specialising in office products ranging from coat stands, clocks, modular systems and seating, his work is testament to Rexite’s long-standing motto: ‘to create objects that are simple but not banal, original but not bizarre.’

Pirovano founded Rexite in 1968 with fellow designer Rino Boschet. Their aim was to produce a ‘classic’ collection of contemporary furniture for the home and office that did not conform to convention, often employing plastic injection and press and metal cutting in the manufacturing process. Now known and appreciated throughout the world, Pirovano has led the company to success by employing high technology materials and giving prominence to new ideas and high quality – earning them 66 international awards to date.

Multi-functional and versatile, Pirovano’s swivelling desk organiser is characteristic of his eye for innovative and functional design. Made in 1978, the item – consisting of stacks of rotating plastic trays – became one of Pirovano’s best known designs, demonstrating his careful attention to material and ergonomics.

Pirovano’s judicious eye extended to the work of other contemporary creatives, and he was responsible for bringing together a highly talented team of designers including Raul Barbieri, Bruno Munari and Giotto Stoppino. Under his leadership, Rexite was awarded the coveted European Design Prize in 1997, and remains a leading player in the market – known for designs that ‘foster the unexpected and a sense of cleverness without overlooking functional value’.

One of the modern masters of Murano glass, Flavio Poli’s creations have received worldwide recognition and success. His unique techniques revolutionised possibilities around the manufacture of glass, and earned the Italian designer critical acclaim during his career.

Born in 1900 in Chiogga, Italy, Poli received his formal training at the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia and then began work as a ceramicist. He first worked as a designer of glassware at IVAM (Industrie Vetraie Artistiche Murano), before being appointed artistic director of Barovier, Seguso & Ferro in 1934.

It was in the latter role that Poli developed his style of ‘submerged’ glass. These pieces were made by layering transparent colours and textures one over the other, creating mesmerising effects of depth, intensity and relief. Known as the ‘Sommerso’ technique, Poli applied this process to a variety of items, from bowls and vases to ashtrays.

Boldly coloured and highly innovative, Poli’s work contributed to the ‘organic modernism’ that marked a high-point in mid-century Italian design, inspired by abstract and natural shapes such as the atom and the cell that were unveiled by the powerful scientific microscopes of the time.

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