Milan: Arti grafiche Crespi, 1960

634 Pages·2012·37.74 MB·English

by  Catharine Rossi

Crafting Modern Design in Italy, from
Post-War to Postmodernism

CATHARINE ROSSI

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of
the requirements of the Royal College of
Art for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

March 2011

The Royal College of Art

RCA/V&A AHRC Collaborative Doctoral
Award ‘Modern Craft: History, Theory
and Practice’
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Copyright Statement

This text represents the submission for the degree Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal
College of Art. This copy has been supplied for the purpose of research for private
study, on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from
the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment.
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Abstract: Crafting Modern Design in Italy: From Post-War to Postmodernism

The years between 1945 and the early 1980s are the most celebrated in Italy’s design
history. From the rhetoric of reconstruction to the postmodern provocations of the
Memphis design collective, Italy’s architects played a vital role in shaping the
country’s encounter with post-war modernity. Yet as often as this story has been
told, it is incomplete. Craft was vital to the realisation of post-war Italian design, and
an area of intense creativity in its own right, and yet has been marginalised and
excluded in design historiography.

When craft does feature in Italy’s post-war design history it is to praise “iconic”
objects such as Gio Ponti’s straw-seated Superleggera chair, Franco Albini’s wicker
Margherita chair and Venini’s handblown glass on the basis of its quality
craftsmanship and use of traditional materials; however the “Made in Italy” label was
as much a part of the mythologising of post-war Italian design as its heroic architects
and entrepreneurial manufacturers, and this tired story is ripe for re-evaluation.

Crafting Modern Design in Italy, from Post-War to Postmodernism starts from this
premise: that Italy’s post-war design history should be reassessed through its
ongoing engagement with craft. Using extensive primary material from archives,
contemporary periodicals and interviews with individuals operating in the era, the
four chapters of this thesis examine the multiple ways that craft shaped the
phenomena of Italian design from 1945 to 1981, the year of Memphis’s
establishment. As such, this research provides a radical retelling of a seemingly
well-known story, one in which the skills of Italy’s artisans remained vital: even in
the rapid industrialisation of the early 1950s, craft workshops, small-scale, family-
run businesses remained the mainstay of Italian manufacturing.

As the socio-economic and political context changed, so did the shape of design and
craft’s relationship. In the imperatives of reconstruction, Italy’s crafts industries
were viewed as the easiest, and most important, part of the nation’s economy to
resuscitate; by the time of the early 1960s, the artisans of Carrara, Florence, Venice,
and Italy’s other craft centres were being mobilised for more consumerist, luxurious
ends. In the turn to radical design in the late 1960s and 1970s, the alterity of craft
was picked up on by architects like Enzo Mari, Riccardo Dalisi and the Global Tools
group as a way out of Italy’s design crisis. Studio Alchymia and Memphis were the
result of these radical experiences, and attempted to propose a new artisanal-
industrial hybridity in the production of their designs that was emblematic of their
postmodern condition.

The originality and potential for further application of the craft-based approach
utilised here relies on the fact that craft is conceived here not just as a mode of
production, set of materials or disciplines or level of skill. This thesis uses an
expanded definition of craft and the concept of “modern craft” to argue that craft
existed moreover as a set of ideas that designers both adopted and repressed, and lays
out a series of critical and theoretical tools for thinking about design’s turn to craft in
other contexts. As the first such large scale study this research not only rethinks the
existing history of Italian design, but also provide a paradigm for the analysis of
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design and craft’s relationship and a template for a craft-based approach to the study
of design.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations 9
List of Accompanying Material 25
Acknowledgements 26
Author’s Declaration 27

Abbreviations 28

Introduction: Crafting Modern Design in Italy, from Post-War to
Postmodernism 29
i.i Research Methodology: Craft-Based Approaches to Design History 32
i.ii Locating Craft in Italian Design Historiography 33
i.iii Defining Craft in Different Contexts 38
i.iv The Concept of “Modern Craft” 43
i.v The Emphasis on Production 45
ii. Primary Research Sources 50
iii. Research Parameters and the Case Study Approach 53
iv. Chapter Structure 55

Chapter 1: Exhibiting the Handmade in Italy and America: Craft and
the Birth of Post-War Italian Design, 1945-1954 59
1.1 A Handmade Ricostruzione: American Promotion of
Italian Craft and Design, 1945 – 1953 61
1.1.1 The House of Italian Handicraft 66
1.1.2 Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today 78
1.1.3 The Politics of the Handmade behind Italy at Work 85
1.1.4 Enrico Bernardi and Guido Gambone: Between Tradition and
Modernity 91
1.1.5 Gio Ponti’s Italy at Work Room Set: Collaboration and Copying in
Craft and Design 100
1.1.6 ‘Italy-in-Macy’s’: Authenticity versus Americanisation 107
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1.2 A Contested Modernity: Craft, Design and the “Unity of the
Arts” at the Ninth Triennale di Milano, 1951 113
1.2.1 Internal and National Politics at the 1951 Triennale 120
1.2.2 Luciano Baldessari and the “Unity of the Arts” 125
1.2.3 Ponti’s Ceramics Section at the 1951 Triennale 131
1.2.4 ENAPI: Bringing Architects, Artisans and Artisans Together 137
1.2.5 Praise for Italian Craftsmanship at the 1951 Triennale 143
1.2.6 The Alterity of the Vernacular: Architettura Spontanea
at the 1951 Triennale 149
Chapter 2: Promoting Encounters between Design and Craft: Furniture in
Milan and Brianza in the 1950s 157
2.1 Crafting Design, Designing Craft: The Invention of Gio Ponti’s
Superleggera 157
2.1.1 Furniture Production in Chiavari in the 1950s 164
2.1.2 The Chiavari Chair in 1950s Italy 171
2.1. 3 ‘Senza Aggettivi’: The Superleggera and
The Supplementarity of Craft 180

2.2 Designing Craft in Brianza: Furniture Production in Cantù 183
2.2.1 The Furniture Industry in Cantù 187
2.2.2 The Selettiva di Cantù 194
2.2.3 Drawings (i): Ilmari Tapiovaara and the Cultural Specificity
of Skill 200
2.2.4 Drawings (ii): Albini, Bonacina and the Margherita Chair 208

2.3 Training Architects and Artisans: The Role of Disegno in Craft and
Design Pedagogy 222
2.3.1 Education in Cantù: The Establishment of the Scuola
d’Arte Applicata all’Industria 225
2.3.2 Changing Roles: From Apprentices to ‘Artisan Entrepreneurs’ 230
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2.3.3 Experiencing Production at the Politecnico di Milano 235
2.3.4 A Question of Class: Bridging the Gap between Architects
and Artisans 237
2.3.5 Beyond Education and back to the Selettiva: Cantù in the Sixties 240

Chapter 3: From Luxury to Kitsch, and Back Again: Craft and Consumerism
in 1960s Italy 246
3.1 Venice: Glass in Technicolor 246
3.1.2 Alfredo Barbini: Exporting Glass by a Murano Maestro 252
3.1.3 Murano Glass and Island-hood: Craft and Place-Based Identity 256
3.1.4 Showcasing Skill in Replica and Revivalist Glass 260
3.1.5 Colour, Kitsch and the ‘Contemporary’ Style: The Problem
of Taste in Murano Glass 264
3.1.6 A Divided Landscape: The Sculptural Turn on Murano 269
3.1.7 Alienation and Authenticity on Murano 274

3.2 Designs on Luxury: Italy in the early 1960s 282
3.2.1 ‘Only the Wealthy Deserve Beauty?’: The 1960
Triennale and the Neo-Liberty Movement 285
3.2.2 Italy: A Nation of Luxury 291
3.2.3 ‘Marble Marble Everywhere’ 297
3.2.4 Enzo Mari: Rejecting the Marble Myth 307
3.2.5 ‘Plastics for the Dolce Vita’: The Spread of Luxury in 1960s Italy 314
3.2.6 Can Plastic be a Luxury? 318
3.2.7 The Problem of Leisure at the 1964 Triennale 328
3.2.8 Sottsass and the Rejection of Luxury 333
3.2.9 The Turn to Kitsch in Italian Radical Design 341

Chapter 4: From Mari to Memphis: Processes and Production from Radical
Design to Postmodernism 349
4.1 Between the Povera and the Primitive: Activism and Utopianism
in Radical Design, 1972 – 1975 349
4.1.1 Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione 359
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4.1.2 Amateurs, Joiners and Robinson Crusoe: The Makers behind
Autoprogettazione 369
4.1.3 Riccardo Dalisi and Tecnica Povera 374
4.1.4 The Povera Primitive: The Unalienated, Infantile ‘Other’ 383
4.1.5 Bricolage, Play and the Primitivist Fetish 385
4.1.6 Global Tools and “The Teaching of Crafts” 391
4.1.7 “One, Two: A Hundred, a Thousand GLOBAL TOOLS” 396
4.1.8 Classification and Critical Utopias in the Radical Avant-Garde 401
4.1.9 Il Corpo e I Vincoli and the End of Global Tools 407
4.1.10 The Body as Tool: Gaetano Pesce and Braccio di Ferro 413
4.1.11 Bodily Making and Abject Facture in the Golgotha chair 421
4.2 The Role of Craft in Italian Postmodernism: Production Strategies
in Studio Alchymia and Memphis 427
4.2.1 Studio Alchymia, “New Design” and the “New Handicrafts” 427
4.2.2 Designs on Craft: Speeding-Up Production in
the “New Handicrafts” 436
4.2.3 Making Memphis 423
4.2.4 The Memphis ‘Industrial Districts’ 448
4.2.5 Craft on Adrenalin: Glue and Glass 452

CONCLUSION: Crafting Modern Design in Italy, from 1980s to the
Present 463
5.1 The ‘Problem’ of Craft 463
5.2 Craft as Design’s ‘Other’ 466
5.3 Craft as a ‘Given’ 469
5.4 Further Research 474
5. 4 “Made in Italy”: Craft and Italian Design Today and Tomorrow 475

Appendices 478

Bibliography 599
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List of Illustrations

1. Catalogue cover of Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, 1950
Source: Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today (Baltimore, Maryland:
Baltimore Museum of Art, 1950)

2. Poster advertisting the 9th Triennale di Milano, 1951.
Source: Walter Dorwin Teague, ‘A Report by Walter Dorwin Teague’,
Interiors, September 1951, p. 92
3. Interior of Handicraft Development Inc. Showroom, New York, 1948.
Source: Gio Ponti, ‘Handicraft e Cadma. Una occasione che Può Diventare
Storica’, Domus, [n.d] 1948, p. 33
4. Products on view at the House of Italian Handicraft,1947.
Source: ‘New Arts and Crafts from Italy’, House & Garden, June 1947, p. 120

5. Construction 08946, Ettore Sottsass, c. 1947.
Source: Handicraft as a Fine Art in Italy (New York: House of Italian Handicraft,
1947), n.p.

6. Catalogue cover for Handicraft as a Fine Art in Italy, 1947.
Source: Handicraft as a Fine Art in Italy, n.p.

7. Fabrizio Clerici’s installation in Vita all’Aperto, House of Italian Handicraft,
1948.
Source: Gio Ponti, ‘Handicraft e Cadma’, p. 34
8. Ignazio Gardella and Ernesto N. Rogers’ installation in Vita all’Aperto, 1948.
Source: George, Nelson, ed., Display (New York: Whitney Publications, 1953), p. 79
9. Advert for the “Piazza”, 1950.
Source: ‘Display Ad 90 – No Title’, New York Times 3 December 1950, p. x36

10. Map of the production centres represented in Italy at Work, 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, inside back cover
11. Italy at Work exhibits in the Uffizi gallery’s basement, Florence, 1950.
Source: New York, Brooklyn Museum Archives (BMA), “Italy at Work”
12. Tea set, vase and plates, Richard Ginori, Milan, c. 1949.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 92
13. Vase, multicoloured faience with lustre, Lucio Fontana, c. 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 80
14. Dinner set, faience, black sgraffitto with chartreuse centre, Arte Artigianato
Orobico, c. 1949.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 93
15 Photograph of Enrico Bernardi and the Italy at Work selection committee, 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 7
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16. Photograph of Guido Gambone included in the Italy at Work catalogue, 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 8
17. Casa e Paesaggio, Enrico Bernardi, intarsia cabinet, c. 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 77.
18. Detail of one of Enrico Bernardi’s cabinets included in Italy at Work, c.1950.
Source: Dorwin Teague, ‘Enrico Bernardi, Master Intarsiatore’, Craft Horizons,
Summer 1951, 8-12 (p. 12)
19. Piazza d’Italia, Giorgio de Chirico, oil on canvas, 1913
Source: De Chirico: Gli Anni Trenta, ed. by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (Milan:
Mazzota, 1998), p. 32
20. Jug in the shape of a pelican, Guido Gambone, c. 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 78
21. Madonna and Child, Guido Gambone, c. 1950.
Source: Italy at Work, p. 79
22. Room set, designed by Gio Ponti for Italy at Work
Source: Italy at Work, p. 61
23. Room set, designed by Carlo Mollino for Italy at Work
Source: Ponti, ‘Omaggio ad una Mostra Eccezionale’, Domus, November-December
1950, p. 27.
24. Advert for Giordano Chiesa’s firm, Chiesa Arredamenti.
Source: Domus, December 1960, n.p.

25. Scacchi Freudiani, Gio Ponti, manufactured by Richard Ginori, c. 1950
Source: Ponti, ‘Le Ceramiche Fantastiche’, Domus, November – December 1950, 52
– 55 (p. 52)
26. Scacchi Freudiani, Gio Ponti, manufactured by Richard Ginori, c. 1950
Source: Ponti, ‘Le Ceramiche Fantastiche’, p. 52
27. Scacchi Freudiani, Andrea Parini, c. 1949.
Source: Ponti, ‘Le Ceramiche Fantastiche’, p. 54
28. Advertisement for Abraham & Strauss department store, 1950.
Source: New York Times, 1 December 1950, p. 13

29. Promotional material for Italy in Macy’s U.S.A., 1951.
Source: BMA, Records of the Office of the Director (Charles Nagel, 1946 - 55).
Exhibitions: Italy at Work, 1951 - 1952
30. Advertisement for products sold as part of ‘Italy in Macy’s U.S.A.’, 1951.
Source: BMA, Records of the Office of the Director (Charles Nagel, 1946 - 55).
Exhibitions: Italy at Work, 1951 - 1952
31. View of the section of Italian glass, at the ninth Triennale, 1951.
Source: Milan, Archivio Storico – La Triennale di Milano (ASTM), IX Triennale di
Milano, 1951, Archivio Fotografico, TRN_09_12_0708