Crafting Design in Italy

Catharine Rossi, author of the book Crafting Design in Italy, recounts how and why it was born: not just to show that there is still much to be said about the past – but that this past has relevance today.

Catharine Rossi, Crafting Design in Italy, Manchester University Press, Manchester 2015, pp. 219

What left is there to say about post-war Italian design? Populated by architectural maestri like Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass, whose designs for the remarkable Superleggera chair and Valentine typewriter have contributed to the respective reputations of manufacturers Cassina and Olivetti, the 1940s to the 1980s have rightly received much attention in international architecture and design media.

From specialist magazines to academic tomes, to coffee table books and exhibition catalogues, there is no end of literature on Italy's post-war design culture. Yet until recently the words expended have all too often told the same story: a narrative based on the hagiography of a largely all-male cast of architects and the “iconic” designs they magicked up with a select group of mostly Milan-based manufacturers.

This interest in Italy’s design past is part of a broader problem in the nation’s design present, based too much on looking backwards even as it steps towards the future. This is not just evident in the market-savvy and often nostalgic reliance on re-editions of archival designs either long out of production or which never got beyond the drawing board. It is there in a myriad of design fairs and exhibitions, and even in Italy’s design education system, for which I can offer a highly subjective example: as an Erasmus student at the Politecnico di Milano in the early 2000s, I still remember the banners of Sottsass and co that were suspended from the ceiling in one of the campus buildings, their blown-up faces literally hanging over the heads of would-be designers only too aware of the history they had to live up too. There was of course also a positive aspect to this living legacy – I was fortunate to include the likes of Andrea Branzi amongst my Politecnico tutors.

Despite this historical weight, there of course has been a succession of young, interesting Italian designers emerging in recent years. Not insignificantly, many have an international aspect to their practice – such as the Sardinian-born and Eindhoven-based duo Formafantasma, the Danish-Italian pairings of GamFratesi or the Modenese Beatrice Brovia and Hong-Kong born Nicholas Cheng, who work together in Stockholm. Similarly, the last decade has seen a number of international design historians and critics who recognise the value of this influential period in architecture and design history, but who have tried to shed new light on the post-war years in ways that continue to make them valuable to our contemporary interests. In Britain, the design historian Penny Sparke pioneered this revisionist approach with her gender and craft-based work in the 1990s. She has been followed by the likes of design historians such as Javier Gimeno-Martinez, Grace Lees-Maffei and architectural historians like Michelangelo Sabatino and Felicity Scott, who have all variously conducted or brought together new research in this area. Amongst a rich vein of Italian-based design historians, Maddalena Dalla Mura and Carlo Vinto stand out for their work in graphic design history.

This is a group I seek to include my research in. I recently published Crafting Design in Italy: from post-war to postmodernism with Manchester University Press, a book based on doctoral research conducted at the RCA and V&A’s shared History of Design department in London. The book is underpinned by the same motivation that fuels much of my research; a desire to tell stories about people, artefacts, issues or approaches overlooked so far in design history. Crafting Design in Italy examines the role of an element marginalised in most design narratives; craft. Craft was vital to the conception, realisation and interpretation of Italian design practice in all manner of ways: a rich reserve of artisans and workshops that often collaborated with industry; a series of on-going traditions, from glass and mosaic making, to basketry and ceramics; a range of concepts from amateurism to luxury and skill. Even when Italy’s architects were fighting against Italy’s historical craft prestige they were in an active relationship with it. This complex and often contradictory relationship between design and craft was persistent; present in everything from Ponti’s craft patronage in the 1950s to Riccardo Dalisi’s 1970s experiments with ad hoc design and architecture and even there in Memphis, in the plastic laminates plastered all over the postmodern furniture.

I wrote the book, and this article, not just to show that there is still much to be said about the past – but that this past has relevance today. We are in a moment of intense interest in the relationship between design and craft, and in craft more generally – Stefano Micelli’s 2011 blockbuster Futuro artigiano: il futuro negli mani degli italiani is evidence enough alone for this. Yet the crafted future of Italy (and elsewhere) is not certain. “Made in Italy” is in danger of becoming meaningless if it does not speak of products that are actually manufactured in Italy, and which have a strong relationship with design. We need to not be afraid to examine the reality of design and craft in the Italy of today, and yesterday, in order to ensure that they have a tomorrow worth speaking of.

Crafting Design in Italy

Catharine Rossi, author of the book Crafting Design in Italy, recounts how and why it was born: not just to show that there is still much to be said about the past – but that this past has relevance today.

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