From horn to thermoforming

The horn is worked in a similar way to plastic materials: it is a material that, once heated, can be bent and shaped. Probably to the Guzzini brothers it does not seem true that the same process can suddenly be adapted to a 'magical' material (it was 1959) such as plastic.

The intuition, really out of the ordinary if you think of the Marche of the postwar period, is to understand that you need design. In the mid-1960s, Luigi Freemasons arrived at the company, he was just over thirty years old at the time.

For the Guzzini family he designs everything: from tableware to bathtubs, obviously also passing through lights. thermoforming is an incredible technology, scalable from micro to macro.

Luigi Massoni then brings Gio Ponti to the company: they were years of enthusiasm and we shared it willingly. After a while it is the turn of Rodolfo Bonetto. And finally, the company's technical studio also learns and draws independently.

Air to the archives

It is never clear whether reopening the archives is a gesture of research or an act of surrender, for a design brand. Except when the feeling of nostalgia for the good old days is replaced by the rediscovery of extraordinary products, which burst onto the scene as if they were absolute novelties. With the charisma, it really is the case to say it, of authenticity and freedom.

Italian Echoes is the Zurich lamp by Luigi Massoni. The Cuff by Gio Ponti, a masterpiece of simplicity and functionality, in which the components are always decorative and hyper rational at the same time. The Nitia of Rodolfo Bonetto and the Sister of the Guzzini technical office.

All pieces that express an absolute value, with simplicity and a sort of "normality" of a time in which the creative standard is very high.

The sense of Italian Echoes

Cristiano Venturini insists on emphasizing the importance of design for iGuzzini, which would live very well even without producing lamps for domestic use. And he does not mean the design of light, but the historical Italian design, that of Gio Ponti.

There is a sense of homecoming, in his words. As in the words of Domitilla Dardi, which explains the authentic story of a company that began with the horn and is now a listed brand.

As if you couldn't get to A to B without going through pure product design. Certainly the lesson is disruptive: reviewing historical pieces, re-edited and updated from a technical point of view, means reviewing the critical perspective from which contemporary design is observed. And start from zero.