Maddalena De Padova, it has often been written, is “the lady of Italian design”. Her shop in corso Venezia, Milan, is famous all over the world, a compulsory calling place for designers, architects, journalists from all countries. Its spacious, luminous interiors, furniture display designed for De Padova by masters like Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti and Dieter Rams or by young designers like Patricia Urquiola; together with objects by anonymous designers, carpets and fabrics selected by Maddalena herself on her travels. The result is a concept of how to furnish the home, or community interiors, that for years has been known internationally as the “De Padova style”, distinguished for its restraint and elegance.

In 2004 Maddalena (as we shall now call her, like everyone else) was awarded the Compasso d’Oro and the year before she received the Abitare il tempo award. It is worth quoting some excerpts from the award citation. For the Compasso d’Oro the citation states: “From the mid-fifties down to the present her research has been exemplary in achieving a felicitous synthesis between design (of both a firm and a product), production and distribution. Her profound knowledge of Scandinavian, American and Italian design … together with her inexhaustible will, have identified De Padova with Italian design worldwide”. The citation for the Abitare il tempo award declared: “In the way she thinks, produces, promotes and communicates, she has helped to establish design as the foundation of an idea of beauty in home living and more generally in our daily lives.”
Clearly, Maddalena De Padova is recognized as having significantly contributed towards the renewal and transformation of taste in home living and everyday life that Italy, and Milan in particular, underwent starting from the fifties. Since then Maddalena has traversed the history of Italian design, blazing a singular trail of rare interest. Here we have no space to follow it in all its developments, but it is surely worth trying to identify some fundamental passages and crucial points.

So far we have more than once referred to “taste”: now we need to see how we can define it. A first clue is suggested by Quatremère de Quincy, the famous neoclassical theorist, during the first years of the nineteenth century: taste is the ability to recognize beauty, “The faculty to discern the quality of objects and works.” (Achille Castiglioni used to describe how, when he and Maddalena visited that huge exhibition machine that is, or perhaps was, the Cologne trade fair, he was astonished at the way she could immediately spot a chair or some other quality object among heaps of furnishing accessories.)
It is useful to add that “taste” refers to works of art and objects, clothes and even various forms of entertainment, so much so that, in semiologist Omar Calabrese’s opinion, renewing taste is an operation performed “by the everyday objects that are its constituents”, giving “form to the implements of daily life.” And this explains how Maddalena, since the fifties, has renewed the “taste” of dwelling. The operation she has carried out, says Pier Luigi Cerri, “has been fundamental in educating the taste for furnishings among the Milanese.”

At this point we have to talk about Milan. During the fifties the city was governed by a ruling élite that was a blend between industrialists and nobility. It was a ruling class which held to its traditions (whose hallmark was the restraint and simplicity typical of Lombard neoclassicism) but bent on affirming its own identity as the driving force behind development, seen as a value in a country that was no longer rural but industrial. To a great extent this same ruling class was the heir to a series of architects who already under Fascism looked to those European countries where the artistic avantgardes were being developed, together with modern architecture and the professional practice of industrial design, whose epicentre was in a German school of the twenties, the fabulous Bauhaus. They were receptive to an idea of design suited both to industrial production and the new demands of modern life, characterized by an essential simplicity which matches the “new unity between technology and art” affirmed by Walter Gropius; but also to that Nordic Organicism, much loved by architects like Ignazio Gardella (who visited Sweden, Norway and Finland in 1938 and met Sven Markelius and Alvar Aalto). All in all, as Vittorio Gregotti noted, a culture was spreading and bringing “an idea of modernity in its ideals as in its customs.”

In this climate, the subject of the home, of furnishings, of modern furniture, was thought particularly interesting, both because the reconstruction of the country after the wartime destruction was now well under way, and because the theme of the home was being given a particular theoretical and moral emphasis. In 1946 two journals, “Lo stile nella casa e nell’arredamento”, founded by Giò Ponti in 1940, and “Domus”, edited for a short time by Ernesto Nathan Rogers, launched an fierce attack on “period furniture”, that continuation of historicist eclecticism, peculiar to nineteenth-century styles, that was prevalent in production and the market. The war of words was waged energetically by designers in the years that followed. As “Lo Stile” ironically put it, blazoning the words in big print across its pages, “Hard as it may be to believe, there are too many manufacturers and consumers of furniture in the most incredible style, such as Chippendale … Cantù.” The magazine’s ire was directed at a district in the Brianza area, near Milan, where the small town of Cantù specialized in furniture-making.
It was in this climate and with these objectives that, in the middle of the fifties, the ADI (Association for Industrial Design) was founded. And it was in this climate that the Maddalena’s adventure began, sharing and interpreting this cultural atmosphere.

The starting point seems to have been when she visited the Milan Triennale and fell in love with Scandinavian designer products, like a wooden bowl by the Danish designer (and architect) Finn Juhl, and a metal fish kettle by Kay Boysen. “We had never seen such beautiful objects, with such clean lines”, Maddalena says. And so, at the height of her love affair with Scandinavian design, together with her husband Fernando, they set off on a journey to the Nordic countries and came back with a block of contracts. For the first time in Italy they presented, “objects designed by Finn Juhl, by Poul Kjærholm, by Alvar Aalto, by Arne Jacobsen, by Borge Møgensen, by Hans Wegner, ceramics by Arabia, glasses by Littala, fabrics and carpets by Unika Vaev” (a list Maddalena knows by heart.) Scandinavian objects, elegant and simple, are components of, and at the same time a metaphor for, a way of dwelling where light, natural materials, open spaces uncluttered by screens, and restrained objects constitute an authentic, democratic culture of living.

In the Milanese context they provided a model to be presented in harmony with the culture of the period, which held, as Alberto Savinio wrote in 1946, that “in civilized men there exists a principle of restraint, and above all in artists, the most civilized of men.” Note that simplicity does not mean reduction and even less complacent self-display. At the time sculptor Constantin Brancusi defined “simplicity as complexity resolved.” In Scandinavian design, and in Maddalena’s range, simplicity provides a solution to the complex question of home living, an expression of a taste for living and dwelling in domestic spaces in a spontaneous and natural way.
There followed, in the sixties, a series of trips to America, leading to another discovery and a second love affair with the great designers of the American Herman Miller firm: Charles Eames and George Nelson, who fused formal elegance with technological research, and Alexander Girard, with his love for combining modern furniture with anonymous objects, traditional carpets and popular fabrics, especially Mexican, where simple decorations, genuine materials and patterns and bright colours all work together in a kind of “natural” spontaneity. To make furniture by Eames and Nelson, the De Padovas founded a factory, ICF.

By now a scenario of culture and taste had already appeared to mark this first phase of Maddalena’s work, based on the triangle of Italian, American and Scandinavian design. This was the foundation for Maddalena’s precise idea of the home. As she says, “Among the houses that have deeply impressed me there is Charles and Ray Eames’ house in California: spare and austere, immersed in greenery. Or those by Scandinavian designers, light-colored woodwork in a serene and luminous atmosphere.” And, as a staple point, a natural relationship between designer products and her passion for anonymous objects and popular art (a conception that was anticipated by Le Corbusier in his pavilion for the Exposition des Art Décoratifs in Paris in 1925, furnished with industrial products but also popular objects and artefacts, such as Oriental carpets and South-American ceramics.)

The distinctive equality of this first phase, as we have seen, was the definition of a precise taste for home living and furnishings. But when her husband died, in 1967, Maddalena had to continue running the factory, work she had no great sympathy for and which she eventually dropped to devote herself to her new great shop in corso Venezia. A second decisive turning point came in the mid-eighties. Maddalena managed her wonderful shop very successfully, but she was restless. As Achille Castiglioni said: “She is a volcano of ideas” (and ironically: “Working with her is very challenging but it is definitely a gruelling as well.”) It should be added that in those years Italian design was being dominated, at least in the media if not in people’ homes, by Post-Modernisn, Memphis, and the new historicism. Maddalena’s idea was quite different: her taste, her style, were formed by that international design that we have examined, and with Magistretti’s and Castiglioni’s uninhibited Italian rationalism. She knew all about American design and its nineteenth-century origins, traced back to the peculiar religious movement of the Shaking Quakers, better known as Shakers. George Nelson, often Maddalena’s guest in Italy, redesigned Shaker tables in plastic and metal instead of wood. The Shakers had one fundamental principle, “cleanliness”, meaning moral and hygienic-physical cleanliness but also formal cleanliness.

The frivolous, meaning arbitrary forms or useless decoration, “came from the devil.” Shaker interiors were plain but pleasant, furnished with simple, functional objects, whose essence lies in their delicate lathe work and finish, simply and elegantly designed fabrics and carpets, all absolutely fascinating. Apart from their wonderful furniture, the Shakers created a very modern culture of dwelling, the modern, luminous, sober “simplicity” that Maddalena loves. In Italy hardly anyone knew anything about the Shakers. Maddalena got the idea of organizing an exhibition in her showroom to present Shaker buildings, rituals and furniture, illustrated by panels with texts and photographs and Shaker furniture and other products displayed on long stands. Achille Castiglioni designed the layout, Pier Luigi Cerri the graphics, the author was the curator, the communication of the contents was entrusted to a specially published magazine. The show was an immense success. In “Domus” Gillo Dorfles clearly explained the meaning of the exhibition and it was widely covered in the press. But there was more to it than this: the Milanese (and all the others who came) were enchanted by Shaker furniture, photos were published everywhere and, as often happens, they were widely copied and imitated. The De Padova showroom saw all this as confirming its approach. It no longer confined itself to conveying the intentions of designers and firms, Italian furniture stores’ traditional policy. It went further and took an active part in the cultural debate, introducing new ideas into discussions about design, mostly in contrast with the trend prevalent in those years. Some years later a similar initiative, though more limited in scope, with an exhibition and magazine, was carried through with Dieter Rams, Braun’s house designer who also designs refined furniture, like the 606 Universal Shelving System, which became a great De Padova success. The shelving system was originally designed in wood but it was presented in metal. This is another factor, which Rams explains like this: ”It was Maddalena’s idea to manufacture the 606 U.S.S. completely in aluminum”. Increasingly in future it would be seen that the furniture made for her was obviously designed for her, but we could also say in a certain sense “with her.”

At this point Maddalena decided on a courageous step: to develop her a collection of her own. She formed a partnership with two great designers, Achille Castiglioni and Vico Magistretti, which in a few years would lead to the creation of objects that left their mark on the panorama of the eighties and nineties: they were works like the Vidun table and the Silver chair by Magistretti; delicate and simple objects by Castiglioni, like a little writing-desk (Scrittarello) or a table with a folding base (Mate); the above-mentioned Universal Shelving System by Rams – and, in brief, also designs by younger designers such as Marco Zanuso jr (and more recently Patricia Urquiola). She loves to mingle them with anonymous objects in her store windows, like English park benches or cruise-ship chaises longues, and the carpets and furnishings she selects on her travels. She created a small department for objects. Her aspiration was to present the idea of a versatile shop, with stock ranging from furniture to objects, from lamps to carpets and fabrics to books on design, playing a role that Maddalena had always at the back of her mind and could now realize, along the lines of Terence Conran in London.
But there was something more and different to it than that: it was a shop that also acted as a gallery, and the choices made were independent and unusual. In fact the most important factor was the show-room itself, which has increasingly become the setting for a series of full-scale mise-en-scènes. There were stunning interior designs by Achille Castiglioni: one may stand for all: with inspired irony, the long shop-windows along the two streets flanking the shop were studded with little rag dogs that attracted crowds of viewers, while the large interiors were spangled with a cascade of dot-like light-bulbs hanging at different heights. Then after Castiglioni an extremely clever young designer gradually stepped in, who was to become famous, but was already highly appreciated at the time for some beautiful installations at the Milan Furniture Fair: Ferruccio Laviani.

At this point the building in corso Venezia, where the showroom occupies a number of different floors, with large store-windows also on the second floor visible from a distance outside, became a landmark for a concept of display embodied in furnishings and metaphors, real home living and allusions to a quality of life to be sought and practiced with that air of apparent ease, that effortlessness, that Quatremère de Quincy believed was a hallmark of taste.
Ultimately, Maddalena’s role has a can be precisely defined: direction. Careful, almost obsessive direction, which coordinates and orients a series of activities. Products are carefully controlled in the design phase, ensuring they will be communicative artifacts, conveying their share of the house style. Maddalena, as Patricia Urquiola says, “focused on a fundamental factor, the problem of communication: how to put objects together, how they get to the public. Her problem is not how to make more or less interesting objects, but how to make people understand what they buy from her: a sign, a character, not just a piece of furniture or complement for the house.”
The showroom is a stage, the shop windows are big eyes opening onto serene and luminous spaces which stage a world distinguished by a very distinctive lifestyle, where furniture and objects compose and communicate that mind-style with which those who love De Padova can identify.

But the shop is also a venue for events: each new exhibition is a specially designed event; periodically these subtly intelligent events which began with the Shakers now continue with specific exhibitions, like the show of Multiples by Gaetano Pesce.
And the communicative universe obviously includes all the graphic artifacts curated by Pier Luigi Cerri, from catalogues to magazines to headed notepaper, to all the other visual displays, with a particular concern for photography. Cerri adds, remembering his initial intervention in the mid-eighties: “When she asked me to contribute to the new image of her production, I encountered a woman who had an extremely refined knowledge of the mechanisms of communication for the time.”
Ultimately this is an operation of corporate identity, a process of global communication that has succeeded in superseding a static coordinated image to develop communication strategies studded by a series of events. Maddalena, as we were saying, is the director; and at the same time she is controls everything “with greatest care / Each minute and unseen part,/ For the Gods are everywhere”: so wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow back in the nineteenth century. So that everything “ è De Padova”, as the slogan says.
Today De Padova is De Padova: a brand, a history, a collection, big store windows, a whole building. In short, a design center in the heart of Milan.