Kartell
Kartell is an Italian company, founded in 1949 by Giulio Castelli in Noviglio, near Milano. Today the core business of this famous Made in Italy brand is to create furniture and objects of industrial design in plastic, but Giulio Castelli, was a chemistry engineer who began his career with the production of car and home accessories in plastic.
During 1960s, when Italy was living a good period for industrial design, Kartell had a big success, also thanks to the contribution of Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Giulio’s wife. The international brand consecration was in 1972, when the company took part in an exhibition dedicated to the made in Italy furniture at MoMA in New York, with some products that still now are part of the permanent collection of the museum. From that moment, the company has had a lot of collaborations with some of the most important designer of the world, for example in the 1990s with Antonio Citterio, Ron Arad, Vico Magistretti, Philippe Starck and Piero Lissoni. The company prestige isn’t due only to its undisputed fame in the world, but especially to the numerous international awards received; in particular the “Compasso d’Oro”, the award assigned every year by ADI, considered the most important design award in the world. In 1999, Kartell decided to found a museum, where its creations can be collected, showed and valued. Now the museum exhibits more than 1000 pieces.
Today the catalogue of Kartell has more than 150 lines of product designed by the most important interior designers of the world: chairs, tables, sofas, furniture complements, lamps, decoration accessories, a complete bathroom offer and a fashion line of accessories. Kartell products are like characters, with an unique charisma, style icons in all the world. It’s impossible to categorize Kartell as a simple furniture company, its particularity is to use a modern material like the plastic in an original way and to make use of productive technologies traditionally used in other industrial sectors. In 65 years of activity, Kartell hasn’t stopped to reach daring experimentations, to contend with fearless technological challenges and to explore thousand aesthetic and functional potentialities of plastic materials. Kartell has elevated the plastic in a precious, noble, sophisticate dimension, though preserving the nature of industrial material. Despite the production is made in a large scale, Kartell products should be suitable for all, instead they are a luxury good. Gruppo Inventa has become anauthorized Kartell shop, within the distribution model of Kartell products that allows only “one brand shops”, “shop in shop”, luxury department store and fashion boutiques.
The choise of a Kartell product grows out of the particular emotion that you have at first sight when you’re in front of an iconic, glamour and strong product.
