Works, objects and printed matter from Italy between 1922 and 1944, documented from private archives.
On 22 May 1930, Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina opened his coachbuilding workshop on Turin’s Corso Trapani, pioneering aerodynamic envelope bodies and creating the 1947 Cisitalia 202—hailed by the MoMA as rolling sculpture.
Founded in Milan in 1929 during the global financial tempest, LESA engineered miniature electric motors and precision phonograph turntables, becoming the acoustic heartbeat of Italian living rooms and international design exhibitions.
In 1928, village cobbler Narciso Delladio began hand-crafting iron-studded work boots for timber fellers in the Fiemme valley, planting the seed for what would become the global gold standard in rock climbing and high-altitude mountaineering footwear.
Returning from Hollywood in 1927, Salvatore Ferragamo bypassed industrial assembly lines to anchor his bespoke workshop in Florence, turning wartime leather shortages into patented cork wedges and timeless fashion monuments.
Incorporated in Milan in 1926 by lawyer Felice Bianchi Anderloni, Carrozzeria Touring discarded heavy wooden coachwork to pioneer the Superleggera patent—a bird-cage of thin steel tubes that clothed the greatest Alfa Romeos and Aston Martins of the 20th century.
In 1925, young Tyrolean pastry chef Alfons Loacker opened a small confectionery workshop beside Bolzano’s Franciscan cloisters, reinventing the crispy Viennese wafer with pure Italian hazelnuts.
In 1924, master goldsmith Enrico Grassi Damiani opened a diamond setting atelier in Valenza, transforming a quiet riverside town on the Po into Italy’s undisputed capital of high jewellery.
Founded in 1923 as a village blacksmith shop in Conegliano, Zoppas transformed domestic heating across Italy with its cast-iron woodstoves before pioneering modern home appliances.
In 1929, inside a small laboratory on Via Paleocapa near the Sforza Castle, twenty-seven-year-old Federico Motta established the *Cliché Motta*,
