Gio Ponti

Giovanni “Gio” Ponti (18 November 1891 – 16 September 1979) was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Italian design, celebrated worldwide as an architect, industrial designer, furniture designer, artist, teacher, writer, and publisher. His career spanned more than six decades, during which he made seminal contributions to architecture, interior design, furniture, decorative arts, industrial products, and lighting.

Ponti was born in Milan, Italy, and graduated with a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 1921. In the same year he married Giulia Vimercati; together they had four children.

In the 1920s Ponti helped pioneer modern Italian design. He founded Domus magazine in 1928 and used it as a platform to promote Italian design culture and modern living internationally. His work and writings made him a leading advocate of design as both a cultural and practical discipline. In 1954 he also contributed to the creation of the Compasso d’Oro, one of the most prestigious design awards, receiving it himself in 1956.

Ponti’s architectural legacy includes more than one hundred buildings in Italy and abroad, among them the iconic Pirelli Tower in Milan (1956–60), a symbol of postwar Italian modernism, and Villa Planchart in Caracas. He combined architectural form with interior design and products to pursue what he saw as a unified “total design” approach.

In addition to architecture, Ponti was highly active in industrial and decorative design. Early in his career he worked with major Italian manufacturers such as Richard Ginori (revitalizing their porcelain output), Christofle, Venini, and, notably, FontanaArte. In 1933 he became artistic director of FontanaArte’s glass division with Pietro Chiesa, producing iconic lighting and glass objects, including early lamps that combined modern geometry with artisanal craftsmanship.

Ponti also designed lighting for a wide range of Italian firms across multiple decades. His lighting work includes collaborations with Harvey Guzzini (later iGuzzini), where designs such as this Polsino table lamp series (1960s) reflect his capacity to bring architectural sensibilities to industrial lighting design. He also designed for Artemide, Lumi, Candle, Ugo Pollice, Arredoluce, Reggiani, Tato Italia, Richard Ginori Pittoria, and Greco.

Ponti’s product portfolio extended well beyond lighting. He created furniture, household objects, and decorative arts that combined modern production techniques with formal elegance rooted in Italian tradition. Among his best-known designs is the Superleggera chair (1957) for Cassina, a masterclass in lightweight structural design.

In his teaching career, Ponti was a professor at the Milan Polytechnic (1936–1961), influencing generations of architects and designers. His philosophy emphasized the integration of form, function, craft, and industry, a principle that shaped modern Italian design and continues to be influential.

Ponti died in Milan in 1979, leaving behind a vast body of work that remains in production, in museum collections, and in architectural landmarks around the world.

Harvey Guzzini / iGuzzini illuminazione

In the late 1950s the Guzzini family from Recanati (Marche, Italy) set up a small workshop for enamelled copper objects. On 30 June 1959 the brothers Raimondo, Giovanni, Virgilio, Giuseppe and Giannunzio Guzzini, sons of Mariano Guzzini, officially founded Harvey Creazioni for the production of decorative copperware. The name “Harvey” was inspired by the 1950 film Harvey with James Stewart and his imaginary rabbit friend.

Very soon the company moved from the ground floor of the family home in Recanati to a new factory in nearby Le Grazie, where the first lamps were developed. Early lighting models were designed by external designers such as Karl Roters and Charles F. Joosten (Josteen), who had already worked for Fratelli Guzzini on plastic tableware.

In the early 1960s Harvey became a true family business when more brothers joined, and in 1962 industrial designer Luigi Massoni was brought in to lead the design team. Massoni worked for both Fratelli Guzzini and Harvey Guzzini until the mid-1970s and played a key role in the transition from enamelled copper to moulded plastics such as polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). Under his direction the company developed many of the iconic “space age” domestic lamps that defined the brand.

During the 1960s and 1970s Harvey Guzzini became one of the standard-bearers of Italian mid-century lighting design. The in-house design office, often referred to as Studio 6G or Ufficio Progetti, and external designers created a long series of acrylic pendant, table and floor lamps that combined coloured domes, chrome details and multi-light switching. These domestic lamps were distributed widely in Europe and beyond, for example through Habitat in the UK.

Design House

In the late 1960s Harvey Guzzini also introduced the Design House (DH) label for a more explicitly “design-led” range. Under this name, the company presented its products at international exhibitions and in dedicated Design House catalogues. Lamps shown in one of these catalogues include Alicante, Noppo, Ibis, Azalea, Cigno, Moon, Selene, Poliedra, Focus, Tam Tam, Squared, Taw, Cespuglio, Nastro, Moana, Nitia, Lampione, Lucciola, Piuma and Diaframma. In 1969, Harvey Guzzini also opened a Harvey Guzzini – DH store in central Milan, underlining the more design-oriented positioning of this range.

Harveiluce

Around the same period, the Harveiluce name appeared on several models, sometimes alongside or later replaced by Harvey Guzzini or iGuzzini labels. Harveiluce was thus used only for a relatively short time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mainly as another trade name for the same family of designs that would later be marketed under the iGuzzini brand.

DOMA

In the 1970s iGuzzini also used the Doma name for a line of plastic furniture and accessories. The Doma collection included space age storage trolleys, coat racks, chairs, ashtrays and decorative spheres, often in injection-moulded ABS with metal details, designed by Luigi Massoni, Dino Pelizza, Fabio Lenci and others. These pieces were marketed under the same corporate umbrella as Harvey Guzzini and iGuzzini lighting, and the iGuzzini logo introduced in 1974 covered products sold under sub-brands such as DH, Doma and Atelier.

iGuzzini

In 1974 the company name was changed from Harvey Guzzini to iGuzzini, and in 1981 to iGuzzini illuminazione. From the mid-1970s onwards the firm progressively shifted its focus from domestic “space age” lighting to architectural and technical lighting for public and professional spaces. Today iGuzzini is an international lighting group based in Recanati, known for collaborations with architects and designers such as Gae Aulenti, Gio Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto, Piero Castiglioni and many others, and since 2019 it has been part of the Swedish Fagerhult Group.

In 2022–2023 iGuzzini launched the iGuzzini Echoes programme: a series of re-editions of classic 1960s–1970s designs, updated with LED technology and recycled / recyclable materials. The first models to return were Polsino (Gio Ponti, re-edition 2022) and Zurigo (Luigi Massoni, re-edition 2022), followed by Nitia (Rodolfo Bonetto, re-edition 2023), Clan (Flash, Bud, Clan) and Sorella (all credited to the historic Harvey / Harveiluce design team, re-edition 2023).

Although the brand identity and product range have evolved towards professional lighting, the vintage Harvey Guzzini domestic lamps from the 1960s and 1970s – as well as the recent Echoes re-editions – remain an important chapter in the history of Italian plastic design.

Designers

Designers who worked for the company include: Luigi Massoni, Luciano Buttura, Sergio Brazzoli, Ermanno Lampa, Giuseppe Cormio, Emilio Fabio Simion, Karl Roters, Charles F. Joosten, Fabio Lenci, Bruno Gecchelin, Gio Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto, Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni, Carlo Bimbi, Nilo Gioacchini, Antonella Ducci Valera, Carlo Urbinati, Felice Ragazzo, Ennio Lucini, Cesare Casati, Gianfranco Frattini, Ambrogio Pozzi, Francesco Piccaluga, Aldo Piccaluga, Makio Hasuike, Renzo Piano, Dean Skira, Maurici Ginés, Artec Studio, Enzo Eusebi, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Arup, Norman Foster, Mario Cucinella, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Massimiliano e Doriana Fuksas, Jean-Marie Duthilleul, Roberto Pamio, Paul Andreau, Laura Maria Mandelli, Giuseppe De Goetzen, Franco Bresciani, Studio D.A.