02 September 2016

The Baby at the Triennale

The Triennale Design Museum in Milan is now enriched with a piece that made the daily history of our country: the Baby kitchen by Bompani, created in the 1970s and still produced by the Modena-based company. For a long time the best selling in Italy, it has now been selected to enter the museum's permanent collection. An acknowledgment to the know-how of the Italian manufacturing industry, its engineers and workers.

In 1954, Bompani began to produce the enamelled kitchen range typical of the Italian post-war period, with the special cabinet for the liquid gas cylinder. In the 1970s, with the first connections to natural gas, the gas cylinder compartment was removed and the overall dimensions reduced: in 1971, the 9100 model was created, the kitchen that was ironically named "Baby" and that, over the years, became the best selling kitchen in Italy.

This quiet and familiar piece of Italian history has recently won a place in the permanent collection of the Triennale Design Museum, the first museum of Italian design. The Baby project, the result of decades of experience and of the mastery of Bompani’s technical department, dates back to 1971. The Baby, whose look has been renewed over the years and that, to this day, is part of Bompani’s selling range, has achieved an important record in the history of Italian manufacturing: in 2011 it was the best selling kitchen model in Italy, with over 6,000 units sold on a global market of 250,000 pieces (data by GfK Retail and Technology). This shows that the product has been able to meet the requirements of a demanding market such as the Italian one, which is constantly seeking quality products that last over time, reliable - and therefore possibly produced in Italy - and versatile, since they can also be adapted to small spaces.

The Baby model was selected among the items on display at the "Kitchens & Invaders" exhibition, recently held at the Triennale Design Museum, which, inspired by the science fiction book of 1955 "The Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney, aimed to describe the revolution of society implemented by home appliances entering our homes. The high number of visitors at the event, with a 5% increase compared to the previous exhibition held in 2014, shows that there is a strong interest in objects that have played a crucial role in our everyday life, also representing the Italian manufacturing industry and its workers, who have designed and produced these products over the years.