Zanotta

Zanotta is one of the most storied names in Italian industrial design, founded in 1954 in Nova Milanese, in the Brianza district, by Aurelio Zanotta. Under his leadership the company became a standard-bearer of avant-garde Italian design, willing to put radical ideas into serial production when few manufacturers would. After Aurelio’s death in 1991 the company remained in the family, led by his children, and in 2017 the Tecno group acquired a majority stake while the brand continued its independent course. Zanotta’s work has been recognized with the Compasso d’Oro — Italian design’s highest honor — in 1967, 1979, 1987, and 2020, and many of its pieces sit in the permanent collections of major design museums around the world.

Few catalogs contain as many genuine icons. The Mezzadro tractor-seat stool and the bicycle-saddle Sella by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, both conceived in 1957, remain definitive statements of Italian ready-made design. Blow, created in 1967 by De Pas, D’Urbino, Lomazzi and Scolari, was the first mass-produced inflatable armchair, and the Sacco bean bag of 1968 by Gatti, Paolini and Teodoro introduced an entirely new way of sitting; both Blow and Sacco entered the collections of museums such as MoMA and the Triennale. The Quaderna table by Superstudio (1970), with its distinctive checked laminate, and the Throw-Away sofa by Willie Landels (1965), the first sofa made entirely of polyurethane foam blocks, round out a roster shaped by collaborators such as Gae Aulenti, Ettore Sottsass, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Mendini, and Andrea Branzi.

BeDESIGN carries Zanotta at our Houston showroom. Visit us at 2016 W Alabama St to see the collection in person — from everyday tables and sofas to the historic icons that defined postwar Italian design — or view the complete Zanotta collection in the virtual showroom below to browse the full range before you visit.