Kartell | Italy

Everything Kartell touched stemmed from the innovative philosophy of the founders. Guilio Castelli trained in chemical engineering and his wife Anna Castelli Ferrieri was a designer.

Kartell products bear witness to the time the company was founded - 1949. Just in time to see through a generation of 1950s and 60s pop coloured innovation.

Other manufacturers at the time saw plastic as lacking sophistication, inferior and cheap. Kartell was one of the first to embrace the potential for artful design using plastic technology.

That avant garde approach drew a list of collaborators which reads like a who's who of industrial design. Joe Colombo and Philippe Starck were only two of the many important contributors to the success of this Italian dynasty.