Paola Navone Ceramic

Architect and designer Paola Navone has had an enormous impact on modern furniture design. For over 40 years, she has created interior furnishings for residential and hospitality spaces. She has traveled the world and infused her experiences into her creations, developing a strong appreciation for the architecture and design of Asia. This includes the use of bamboo in much of her furniture, as well as in the simple, natural look of her works.

Not adhering to a single style, Navone’s work reflects a range of influences. She is just as comfortable fashioning a simple, rustic footstool as she is creating an opulent pendant lamp. From her sofas and armchairs to the design of her table lamps and vases, the eclectic variation demonstrates her versatility and innovation.

Navone was born and raised in Turin, Italy. She studied architecture at Turin’s polytechnic school and graduated in 1973. Shortly after, she moved to Milan and entered the world of interior design and architecture. She also worked as a product designer, event organizer and teacher.

Throughout the 1980s, Navone was part of the Memphis Group — a collective of designers and architects who challenged the conventions of traditional design — and associated with such notable designers as Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini. She also belonged to the avant-garde design group Studio Alchimia, which shared many affiliations with the Memphis Group.

In 1983, Navone won the Osaka International Design Award and in 2000, she was named the AW Architektur & Wohnen Designer of the Year. In 2011, she won the ELLE Decor International Design Award. In recent years, Navone has collaborated with Crate & Barrel and clothing retailer Anthropologie and continues to work with companies across the architecture and design industries.

On 1stDibs, browse Paola Navone seating, lighting, tables and more.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.