Kartell

Giulio Castelli founded Kartell in Milan in 1949. The company history starts with car accessories: the K101 ski rack was its first product. Household plastics came later, as industrial moulding let the firm bring new forms and uses into everyday settings.^[1,2]

In 1953 Kartell began making plastic household articles with industrial moulds. Two years later, Gino Colombini’s covered KS 1146 bucket won the Compasso d’Oro. Material choice and functional revision moved together: the story is as much about rethinking a familiar object as about using plastic.^[1,2]

The 1964 K 1340 children’s chair, later K 4999, was designed by Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper and received a Compasso d’Oro that year. Joe Colombo’s Universale 4867 brought injection-moulded plastic seating to an adult-scale industrial chair in 1967.^[1,2]