Custom-built. The concept of unique in Italian design. Catalogo della mostra (Milan, 8 April-13 July 2003): Unique Prototypes Produced by Commission in the Archaeology of Italian Design - Softcover

What is it that makes Italian design so attractive? Maybe the answer is to be found in "Custom Built," a critically reflective look at unique and handcrafted objects by succeeding generations of Italian designers. Beginning in the 1930s and moving towards the present, this volume peers into the archeology of twentieth-century Italian design, uncovering unique pieces created before the spread of industrial furniture culture and the mass-produced object, as well as prototypes who stand in ironic defiance of the factory-made objects they may have spawned. Included are designs by such luminaries as Franco Albini, Mario Asnago & Claudio Vender, Melchiorre Bega, Piero Bottoni, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Pietro Chiesa, Luigi Figini & Gino Pollini, Ignazio Gardella, Piero Lingeri, Giuseppe Pagano, Gio Ponti, Piero Portaluppi, Gustavo Pulitzer, Guglielmo Ulrich and Luigi Vietti.

An inquiry into the origins of Italian design through those craft prototypes of the 1930s and 1940s, which foreshadow future mass production.