Cactus Coat Rack by Guido Drocco & Franco Mello for Gufram, 1986

Designer Guido Drocco was born in San Benedetto Belbo, Cuneo, Italy in 1942. He studied architecture at Turin’s Polytechnic University. He is perhaps best known for his iconic Cactus coat rack (c. 1972), a piece he co-designed with fellow Italian Franco Mello for the Gufram brand. Playfully rebellious, Cactus questions the dividing line between indoor and outdoor, natural and synthetic, and exemplifies the kind of experimentation that was enabled by the era’s rapid advances in new materials. It was part of Gufram’s iconic Multipli series of the late 1960s and early 1970s: a collection of groundbreaking designs produced in self-hardening polyurethane foam with a patented lacquered finish, called Guflac.

Since that time, Drocco and Mello’s cactus form has been rereleased by Gufram in a variety of colors and names, including the white Biancocactus, the black Nerocactus, and the red Rossocactus (all 2010), and the 2012 Metacactus, whose coloring mimics being burnt by the sun. The original is included in the collections of several institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, both in New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée des Arts Décoratifs, both in Paris; the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany; and Tate Modern in London.

Designer Franco Mello was born in Genoa, Italy in 1945. While information on the designer is limited, he is highly regarded for his iconic Cactus coat rack (c. 1972), a piece he co-designed with fellow Italian Guido Drocco for the Gufram brand. Playfully rebellious, Cactus questions the traditional dividing line between indoor and outdoor and exemplifies the kind of experimentation enabled by the era’s rapid advances in new synthetic materials. It was part of Gufram’s Multipli series of the late 1960s and early 1970s: a collection of icons produced in self-hardening polyurethane foam with a patented lacquered finish, called Guflac.

Since that time, Mello and Drocco’s cactus form has been rereleased by Gufram in a variety of colors and names, including the white Biancocactus, the black Nerocactus, and the red Rossocactus (all 2010), and the 2012 Metacactus, whose coloring mimics being burnt by the sun. The original is included in the collections of several institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, both in New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, both in Paris; the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany; and Tate Modern, London.

Mello lives in both Turin and Spineto Scrivia, Italy, and teaches Industrial Design for Visual Communication at the Polytechnic University of Turin.

The seeds of Gufram were sown in Turin in 1952, when the Gugliermetto brothers opened an atelier for furniture production. In the 1960s, as the ideas of radical architecture and anti-design took root in Italy—particularly in Turin—the Gugliermetto brothers began to look for new ways to support emerging artists, architects, and designers and their experimentations with new forms and materials for furniture production. In 1966, Gufram (an acronym of Gugliermetto Fratelli Arredamenti Moderni) was formed as a “creative laboratory” under the art direction of Italian designer Giuseppe Raimondi (d. 1997).  From the start, the brand was dedicated to aesthetic, technological, and material research that valued artistic freedom over purely functional and logistical constraints.

Polyurethane foam became Gufram’s signature medium; its extreme malleability and versatility proved particularly suited to express the brand’s provocative, Pop Art-inspired, often tongue-in-cheek aesthetics. Through the late-’60s and early-’70s, Gufram innovated a number of now-iconic, molded polyurethane objects, frequently working with the most avant-garde designers of the day. Standouts from Gufram’s early catalogue include Raimondi’s space-age Alvar Lounge (1967); artist Piero Gilardi’s rock-like Pavèpiuma Carpets (1967) and Sassi (1968); physicist Tullio Regge’s mathematically-derived Detecma Chair (1968); radical designers Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, and Riccardo Rosso beloved faux grass Pratone (1971); radical designers Studio 65’s Dalí-esque, mouth-shaped Bocca Sofa (1970); and designers Guido Drocco and Franco Mello’s Cactus Coat Stand (1972).

Gufram began to receive national attention following its presentation at the 1968 Triennale in Milan. International acclaim, however, arrived with the brand’s inclusion in MoMA’s seminal 1972 exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, which brought together conceptually-driven works from the likes of Joe Colombo, Gaetano Pesce, and  Archizoom, and, arguably, ushered out the reign of modernism. Gufram has ever since lived in the annals of design history.

Today the brand’s extensive catalogue is divided into two collections: “Made in Italy,” which comprise open editions, such as Raimondi’s Alvar and Mozza (1968), Regge’s Detecma, Fabio Novembre's Jolly Roger (2013), Karim Rashid's Bounce (2014) and “Handmade in Italy,” which comprise handcrafted limited editions, such as Gianni Ruffi's La Cova (1973), Valerio Berruti's Summertime (2013), and The End (2014) produced in collaboration with Maurizio Cattelan’s and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s TOILETPAPER, among others. Other recent collaborators include Emanuele Magini, Studio Job, and Ross Lovegrove.

Gufram maintained its headquarters in Turin for 30 years until 2005 when it was acquired by the Poltrona Frau Group. Subsequently, in 2011, Gufram was purchased by Mrs. Sandra Vezza and her son Charley, entrepreneurs in the industry who were motivated to revitalize the historic Italian brand. Gufram is now headquartered in Barolo and Roddi, Italy.

Gufram’s designs can be found in many of the world’s major design collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art  and MoMA in New York, the Vitra Design Museumin Weil am Rhein, the Triennale di Milano, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and many more. 

* All images courtesy of Gufram.