Catharine Rossi

Title of dissertation: 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 post-war reconstruction and the consumerism of the economic ‘miracle’ of the early sixties, through to the rise of radical design and postmodernism in the 1970s, 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 yet has been marginalised and excluded in design historiography.


This thesis examines the multiple ways that craft shaped Italian design from 1945 to 1981. It argues for craft’s role both as a mode of production and as a set of ideas — including luxury, place, primitivism and skill — that individual architects and collectives such as Global Tools, Studio Alchymia and Memphis alternately adopted or contested. This research brings to light previously unknown makers and narratives, but also re-examines well-known architects and ‘iconic’ objects, such as Gio Ponti and his Superleggera chair, and Ettore Sottsass’s Carlton bookcase. This research not only involves a reappraisal of the existing history of Italian design, but also provides a paradigm for the analysis of the relationship between design and craft.