Joe Colombo | B—Line

B—Line is a company specialised in designer furnishings which, ever since its beginnings, has manufactured contemporary products along with evergreen icons from the past, such as Joe Colombo’s famous Boby storage trolley. Solid, transversal and flexible designs, the result of collaborations with international designers and of an exclusively Italian production.

B—Line is a company, brainchild of its founder, Giorgio Bordin, that restores life to several historical icons of design on the Italian scenario. These are works that have disappeared over the years, made obsolete by the unrelenting ferment of a market that is brimming with innovation. Of the products re-edited, some have made history “contaminating” many facets of art and design, such as Joe Colombo’s famous Boby.
From the very beginning, side by side with its re-editions, B—Line places contemporary furnishing accessories, resulting from collaborations with international designers. Tangible, factual and transversal projects that have the responsibility and honour to co-exist with the great cornerstones of design and to encourage, in terms of style and character, a smooth switch from home environments to working spaces and from outdoors to indoors, areas that are increasingly hybrid and mercurial, as demanded by contemporary lifestyles.

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Joe Colombo

Cesare (known as Joe) Colombo was born in Milan in 1930. Essentially self-taught, he attended the Academy in Brera and then the faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico in Milan for a few years. Before becoming a designer he worked as a painter, builder, car salesman (his passion for cars remained with him) and entrepreneur in the electrics field.
The technological utopia of Joe Colombo’s designs encompasses many of the hopes of the Sixties in Italy and Europe without becoming imprisoned by ideological restraints.
Here are a few of the most significant milestones in his extremely rapid escalation to designer of international renown, the symbol of an era.
In 1963 he opened his first studio in Milan.
In 1964 he won 3 medals at the “XIII Triennale” in Milan.
In 1967 he won the Gold Compass.
In 1968 he received his first International Design Award in Chicago.
In 1969 three of his objects were already part of the permanent collection at MoMA.
He died prematurely on 30th July 1971 on his 41st birthday.

Boby

Multichair

Supercomfort

Crossed

Ring