Kartell On Sale
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Organic Modern Bathroom Fixtures
Acrylic
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Steel
2010s Italian Armchairs
Fabric
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Ashtrays
Stainless Steel, Chrome
Late 20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Cabinets
Plastic, Acrylic
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Metal, Chrome
1990s Italian Space Age Lounge Chairs
Plastic
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Carts and Bar Carts
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Commodes and Chests of Drawers
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Futurist Office Chairs and Desk Ch...
Plastic
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Dining Room Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Tables
Plastic
Early 2000s Italian Modern Bookcases
Aluminum
Late 20th Century Italian Post-Modern Stools
Plastic
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Umbrella Stands
Metal, Chrome
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Umbrella Stands
Metal, Chrome
Vintage 1980s Italian Modern Carts and Bar Carts
Iron
1990s Italian Mid-Century Modern Tables
Metal, Steel
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Stools
Plastic
Late 20th Century Post-Modern Chairs
Metal
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Stools
Aluminum
1990s European Modern Settees
Aluminum
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Rocking Chairs
Plastic
People Also Browsed
Vintage 1970s Italian Dining Room Chairs
Lacquer
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Sofas
Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Western European Rugs
Natural Fiber, Synthetic, Wool
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Chrome
Mid-20th Century Austrian Mid-Century Modern Ashtrays
Copper
2010s Polish Modern Wall-mounted Sculptures
Stainless Steel
Vintage 1920s American Art Deco Carnival Art
Aluminum
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Steel
Vintage 1960s Belgian Brutalist Dining Room Chairs
Pine
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Western European Rugs
Natural Fiber
Vintage 1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
Fabric, Silk, Wood
20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Shelves
Brass, Chrome
Early 2000s More Dining and Entertaining
Metal
2010s Brazilian Modern Chairs
Leather, Textile, Upholstery, Fiberglass, Hardwood
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Tobacco Accessories
Alabaster
Vintage 1950s American Art Deco Barware
Chrome
Recent Sales
21st Century and Contemporary Chairs
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Stools
Aluminum
Vintage 1960s Italian Table Lamps
Metal
1990s Italian Post-Modern Chairs
Metal
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Chandeliers and Pendants
Aluminum
Vintage 1970s Italian Modern Shelves
Plastic
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Night Stands
Plastic
Vintage 1980s Italian Space Age Ashtrays
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Chandeliers and Pendants
Metal
2010s Italian Table Lamps
Metal
Vintage 1960s Italian Space Age Carts and Bar Carts
Plastic
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Ashtrays
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
Aluminum
1990s Italian Modern Dining Room Chairs
Aluminum
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Commodes and Chests of Drawers
Metal
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Bookcases
PVC
Early 2000s Italian Modern Dining Room Sets
Aluminum
Early 2000s Italian Modern Chairs
Chrome
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Tables
Metal
Vintage 1970s Italian Space Age Carts and Bar Carts
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Chairs
Plastic, Oak
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Bathroom Fixtures
Stainless Steel
Early 2000s Italian Modern Dining Room Chairs
Plastic
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Bookcases
Plastic
Early 2000s Italian Minimalist Cabinets
Metal, Chrome
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Chrome
Vintage 1970s Italian Space Age Armchairs
Polystyrene
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Side Tables
Plastic
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Plastic
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
Plastic
2010s Italian Modern Dining Room Chairs
Upholstery, Plastic
Vintage 1970s Italian Coat Racks and Stands
Metal
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
Plywood
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Bookcases
Plastic
20th Century Italian Contemporary Art
Kartell On Sale For Sale on 1stDibs
How Much is a Kartell On Sale?
Kartell for sale on 1stDibs
The Italian design giant Kartell transformed plastic from the stuff of humble household goods into a staple of luxury design in the 1960s. Founded in Milan by Italian chemical engineer Giulio Castelli (1920–2006) and his wife Anna Ferrieri (1918–2006), Kartell began as an industrial design firm, producing useful items like ski racks for automobiles and laboratory equipment designed to replace breakable glass with sturdy plastic. Even as companies like Olivetti and Vespa were making Italian design popular in the 1950s, typewriters and scooters were relatively costly, and Castelli and Ferrieri wanted to provide Italian consumers with affordable, stylish goods.
They launched a housewares division of Kartell in 1953, making lighting fixtures and kitchen tools and accessories from colorful molded plastic. Consumers in the postwar era were initially skeptical of plastic goods, but their affordability and infinite range of styles and hues eventually won devotees. Tupperware parties in the United States made plastic storage containers ubiquitous in postwar homes, and Kartell’s ingenious designs for juicers, dustpans, and dish racks conquered Europe. Kartell designer Gino Colombini was responsible for many of these early products, and his design for the KS 1146 Bucket won the Compasso d’Oro prize in 1955.
Buoyed by its success in the home goods market, Kartell introduced its Habitat division in 1963. Designers Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper created the K1340 (later called the K 4999) children’s chair that year, and families enjoyed their bright colors and light weight, which made them easy for kids to pick up and move. In 1965, Joe Colombo (1924–78) created one of Kartell’s few pieces of non-plastic furniture, the 4801 chair, which sits low to the ground and comprised of just three curved pieces of plywood. (In 2012, Kartell reissued the chair in plastic.) Colombo followed up on the success of the 4801 with the iconic 4867 Universal Chair in 1967, which, like Verner Panton’s S chair, is made from a single piece of plastic. The colorful, stackable injection-molded chair was an instant classic. That same year, Kartell introduced Colombo’s KD27 table lamp. Ferrierei’s cylindrical 4966 Componibili storage module debuted in 1969.
Kartell achieved international recognition for its innovative work in 1972, when a landmark exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz called “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” opened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That show introduced American audiences to the work of designers such as Gaetano Pesce; Ettore Sottsass, founder of the Memphis Group; and the firms Archizoom and Superstudio (both firms were among Italy's Radical design groups) — all of whom were using wit, humor and unorthodox materials to create a bracingly original interior aesthetic.
Castelli and Ferrieri sold Kartell to Claudio Luti, their son-in-law, in 1988, and since then, Luti has expanded the company’s roster of designers.
Kartell produced Ron Arad’s Bookworm wall shelf in 1994, and Philippe Starck’s La Marie chair in 1998. More recently, Kartell has collaborated with the Japanese collective Nendo, Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola and glass designer Tokujin Yoshioka, among many others. Kartell classics can be found in museums around the world, including MoMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 1999, Claudio Luti established the Museo Kartell to tell the company’s story, through key objects from its innovative and colorful history.
Find vintage Kartell tables, seating, table lamps and other furniture on 1stDibs.
Materials: Plastic Furniture
Arguably the world’s most ubiquitous man-made material, plastic has impacted nearly every industry. In contemporary spaces, new and vintage plastic furniture is quite popular and its use pairs well with a range of design styles.
From the Italian lighting artisans at Fontana Arte to venturesome Scandinavian modernists such as Verner Panton, who created groundbreaking interiors as much as he did seating — see his revolutionary Panton chair — to contemporary multidisciplinary artists like Faye Toogood, furniture designers have been pushing the boundaries of plastic forever.
When The Graduate's Mr. McGuire proclaimed, “There’s a great future in plastics,” it was more than a laugh line. The iconic quote is an allusion both to society’s reliance on and its love affair with plastic. Before the material became an integral part of our lives — used in everything from clothing to storage to beauty and beyond — people relied on earthly elements for manufacturing, a process as time-consuming as it was costly.
Soon after American inventor John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid, which could mimic luxury products like tortoiseshell and ivory, production hit fever pitch, and the floodgates opened for others to explore plastic’s full potential. The material altered the history of design — mid-century modern legends Charles and Ray Eames, Joe Colombo and Eero Saarinen regularly experimented with plastics in the development of tables and chairs, and today plastic furnishings and decorative objects are seen as often indoors as they are outside.
Find vintage plastic lounge chairs, outdoor furniture, lighting and more on 1stDibs.