Giulio Castelli

Born in Milan in 1920, In 1949, soon after Castelli received his degree, he and his wife founded Kartell. They started out making car accessories, but it was Kartell’s experiments with plastic that yielded the high-design household goods that became the company’s signature. In the following decades, Kartell developed relationships with leaders of the design world, including Joe Colombo, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Ettore Sottsass, and Patricia Urquoila. Some of the company’s iconic products are in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.