What is the true face of design in Italy? The already famous and well-known one of the great designers? That of the many products that created the image of Made in Italy in the world? Or is it not rather the physical presence of hundreds of entrepreneurs who starting in the fifties believed and invested in first person in the values of creativity and project design? This book published by Five Continents Editions proposes a radical hypothesis: without these entrepreneurs Italian design would have been drastically different, or would have not even existed.

The historical and critical analysis of Stefano Casciani and the portraits of the Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg describe the figures of the industrialists many of whom started out from small craft shops with a burning desire for success after the difficult years of the war, almost all starting at a young age. Profoundly convinced that the values of artisan handcraft quality could be part and parcel even of serial production of objects, they believed in a new form of elegance and made the birth of truly iconic objects possible - furniture, lamps, and many others that created the unmistakable physiognomy of the "new domestic landscape " of Made in Italy.

In this long essay by Casciani, using a simple and direct language, sometimes pitiless but always passionate, all of the phenomenon of the industry of lifestyle is re-seen in its intimate essence - social, economic, and existential - and in its relationships with art and style, revealing the "behind the scenes" of a phenomenon that many believe that they know, but that still hides many other truths. From the structural difficulties to the inconveniences of the star-system, from the grueling research for innovation to the new role of high finances. The faces of mythical industrialists- from Alberto Alessi to Ernesto Gismondi, from Bruno Danese to Riccardo Sarfatti, from Roberto Poggi to Giulio Cappellini but also the younger generations, like the three children of Aurelio Zanotta to Patrizia Moroso- these are portraits with a lucid glance by the Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg, which throw a new light on the physiognomy of contemporary Italian production.

As Massimiliano Fuksas, one of the greatest Italian contemporary architects and designers, writes in his introduction: "Stefano Casciani …overturns the conventional critical praxis, and without being intimidated by the worlds of economy or politics, tells of the Italian production, and the men and women of design, with great precision. From the pioneering beginnings to the reorganizations of the present day. Tom Sandberg shows us the faces of a few of them, sometimes without pity. For Casciani (as with the image for Sandberg) writing is a weapon - his style cuts like a razor."

The volume Design in Italy has been presented for the first time on the 14th April 2008, during the Milan Furniture Fair 2008, on the occasion of the inauguration of the photographic exhibition Design in Italia - Portraits by Tom Sandberg at the Galleria Artra of Milan. The exhibit presented the surprising techniques of the black and white images of Tom Sandberg in large format.

DE PADOVA
Maddalena De Padova
(Barzio, Lecco, 1928)

Businesswoman, manufacturer and publisher, Maddalena De Padova has made a deep impression on design in Milan and internationally. Her career began in 1954 when she discovered Scandinavian furniture with her husband, Fernando, and decided to import it to Italy and sell it in her first shop in Via Montenapoleone. This was the first one to offer Scandinavian design in Milan and it became a landmark for local architects. In 1958 she discovered the Hermann Miller collection and with her husband founded ICF to manufacture American furniture designed by Charles Eames, George Nelson and Alexander Girard under licence. The De Padova shop moved to Corso Venezia in 1967 where it became one of the best known design showrooms in the world. After the death of her husband and the sale of ICF, Maddalena De Padova went into publishing, creating the series è De Padova. In the Eighties she began working relationships with great designers like Dieter Rams and Achille Castiglioni, but most of all Vico Magistretti, with whom she shared her work and life for many years. She created a new approach to living in Italy, in which the ambience prevailed over individual objects. Over the years she worked with up-and-coming designers such as Patricia Urquiola, Xavier Lust, Nendo and Damian Williamson. In partnership with Designboom.com, in 2007 she supported an international design competition in memory of Vico Magistretti. In 2004 ADI awarded the Compasso d'Oro to Maddalena De Padova for her career.