Page 50 - Marcello Gandini Maestro of Design Revisited

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568ProduCT dESiGNS
REVISITED
HELMETS, WATCHES, SUNGLASSES AND
MUCH MORE…
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As Marcello Gandini’s designs for Bertone regaled
the automotive aficionados of the world, other
product concepts emanated from the fertile mind
of this creative genius.
ON WATSON In 1972, the executive armchair ‘Poltroncina direzionale’
may have been one of the first of the product designs
from Stile Bertone (under the project code number of
S31). The next year, at least two interesting products
seem to have been conceived at Stile Bertone. One was a
television set for Philips, the other the famous modernized
Templar Knight helmet to go with the legendary Lancia
Stratos HF. In fact, the Stratos theme continued into 1976
when Bertone watches with the Stratos sub-branding
(Orologi Stratos) were developed for the Basel art fair. In
that same year, Stile Bertone worked on a set of designs
for sunglasses for Chrétien Billet (project S104).
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There could be several more, as the work on documenting
the Bertone archives which are housed at Archivio
centrale dello Stato, in Rome, tells us that, as well as the
more than 350 known projects illustrated in specialized
literature, there are many more that remain undiscovered.
The Bertone archives were acquired in several stages, by
way of pre-emption or by donation from the then Italian
Ministry of Cultural Heritage, and the Ministry of Culture
between 2018 and 2022, thanks to the coordinated action
of the General Directorate of Archives, the Archival
Superintendencies of Piedmont and Lombardy and the
Central State Archives, which is the final recipient of this
extraordinary heritage.
The Bertone archives are referred to in the plural
because the complex corporate affairs, which later
ended with two bankruptcies, caused the archives of five
different companies to merge and then separate into a
complicated card game, which is engaging the staff of
the State Archives in a complex ‘reconstruction.’
© DALTON WATSON  Alberto Corteggiani and his team have been scanning and
archiving thousands of drawings, illustrations and other documents
from the Bertone archives. ALBERTO CORTEGGIANI
At present, the documentation is still in the reorganization
phase, and therefore the data provided can only
be provisional. The volume and high quality of the
documents is remarkable, covering more than a century,
from 1912 to 2013 (just think of the autographed drawings
by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Marcello Gandini), with the
graphic archive consisting of about 70,000 prints and
 In 1973, with the launch of the series production Lancia Stratos, came the Stratos helmet to go with the car.
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sketches. To which must be added as many photographs
DALTON WATSO