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Clear glass rods, a thick slab and a rounded form on a wooden table.

Design in Italy

Explore furniture, lighting and objects through the decisions behind their design.

Read: Arco and Tolomeo: Two Ideas in Italian Lighting Design

Read about materials, construction and use, then explore designers, makers and exact objects. This channel brings together researched explainers and product profiles. Its stories connect designed objects and furnishings to the materials, construction and ways of living they shape.

A floor-standing lamp with a long curved stem and pale marble base stands in a sunlit living room.

Arco and Tolomeo: Two Ideas in Italian Lighting Design

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Close view of curled ironwork beneath a pale stone arch with gray-green trim.

Pelletteria Artigiana Viviani

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Houses

  1. Two black leather brogued cap-toe Oxford shoes on a wooden table.Stefano Bemer
  2. A winged metal corkscrew with a pale mother-of-pearl handle on a stone surface.Lorenzi Milano
  3. A stainless-steel Alessi 9090 espresso maker with a dark handle sits on a pale stone counter.Alessi: Metalwork, Designers and Everyday Objects
  4. A milk-white Venini Fazzoletto vase on a wooden table in soft daylight.Venini: Murano glass, design and technique
  5. An Oriente Italiano Indaco tea cup with blue flowers and a curled handle sits on a wooden table.Ginori 1735: Doccia porcelain, Gio Ponti and craft
  6. Cassina LC4 chaise longue in black leather, with a curved polished-chrome frame and black-painted base.Cassina: Meda, Gio Ponti and modern design
  7. A silver articulated table lamp stretches across a wooden desk, with notebooks and pencils nearby.Artemide: Light, Research and Italian Design
  8. Bertone’s Runabout Targa pre-production design, with white bodywork, a thin red beltline and black lower panels.Bertone
  9. A black, three-element Componibili Classic stands on a pale floor, its three rounded doors and circular finger openings facing forward.KartellSince 1949, Kartell has treated industrial materials as a design question, from household goods to transparent furniture.
  10. A deep red upholstered armchair with a tall rounded back, curved padded arms, a separate seat cushion and short dark feet, shown at an angle.Poltrona Frau: Furniture and CraftFrom its Turin origins in 1912 to furniture, transport and public interiors.
  11. Seletti’s black seated Monkey Lamp, holding a clear bulb, with its curved tail and power cord visible.Seletti: Everyday Objects, ReimaginedFrom Cicognara in 1964 to design projects that join familiar forms, art and visual wit.
  12. A red Cisitalia 202 GT in side profile in a quiet stone courtyard, showing its arched roof, wire-spoke wheels and two side vents.Pininfarina
  13. A wooden weaving shuttle with a golden bobbin rests on folded olive velvet.Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua
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An Oriente Italiano Indaco tea cup with blue flowers and a curled handle sits on a wooden table.

Ginori 1735 Oriente Italiano Indaco Tea Cup

Blue-and-white Indaco decoration meets the Antico Doccia form in Ginori’s tea cup.

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