DEDALINO pencil holders, Emma Gismondi Schweinberger (Artemide, 1966)

These pencil holders are an absolute icon of Italian design. Funny as it seems, we’ve got them in both Carlos’s and my own collection… yes, as some of you has said before, I think we really were made for each other ?
They were designed by Emma Gismondi Schweinberger in 1966 for Artemide. They belong to a design series:
- DEDALO: umbrella stand
- DEDALOTTO: flower vase
- DEDALINO: pencil holder
On pic 3 you can see the three versions together. I love how Emma Gismondi was able to turn the same design into three different objects simply playing with their size. And they all work beautifully!

Yes, I wish we had both a Dedalo and a Dedalotto, but we’ve have not been lucky about it, so we’re just happy with our small desktop versions of the design. The Dedalotto, by the way, is really hard to find…

My Dedalino is a Spanish one: in the 1970s, Artemide licensed the Spanish company Idarco to produce them, so mine is the Spanish version, which looks just like the ones from Artemide only they bear a different logo. There s another version made in Norway. They bear the same Artemide logo than the Italian ones, and the text on it says "modello Dedalino design Emma Gismondi Schweinberger Made by NTP interiør Frederikstad, Norway" and an imago depicting half a female Roman head.