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Made in Italy is, first of all, a hallmark of good design - no other country is so closely associated with design with quality as Italy. In the second half of the 20th century, a diverse design culture emerged from the creative collaboration between entrepreneurs, technicians, craftsmen and artists that became a global model for innovative product development.

The image of Italian design has nevertheless been much less influenced by our own observations and the use of the various objects than it has by the image of them in the media. Beginning in the 1950s, a wide variety of Italian magazines appear dedicated to lifestyle and design, which are aimed at both a national and an international audience, and they will play a central role in this “medialization”. Also large furniture fairs such as the Salone Internazionale del Mobile or famous design awards such as Compasso d'Oro Award achieves its worldwide popularity first through images in print media.

Between 1953 and 1994, for four decades, Aldo and Marirosa Ballo belong to the most prominent in terms of object photography. Their work is sought after for magazine covers, editorial articles and advertisements and this coincides exactly with the heyday of Italian design — there is hardly a classic piece from this era that is not photographed in their studio.

With over 145,000 images in its archive, Studio Ballo represents an important part of Italian design history. Since Ballo's images are still often used for advertising purposes as well as in constantly new publications, they continue to influence our view of Italian furniture, lamps and other objects in our homes. The photographs are presented in this exhibition next to the printed media in which they have been published and with the unique original objects, designed by those who were the protagonists of the period. Together they offer an overview of this grand era in Italian design that is both historical and highly current.

^{Photo: Marirosa Ballo}