Boby, a storage trolley designed by Joe Colombo, is a famous piece of Italy’s modern design history.Boby in white.Joe ColomboBorn in Milan on 30th July 1930, Cesare ‘Joe’ Colombo is hailed as a former master of ‘Made in Italy’ design. His time as a designer was sadly much too short: opening his first Milan studio in 1963, Joe Colombo would pass away suddenly on his birthday in 1971. And yet in that short time span, Colombo’s design accomplishments were significant, including: three medals at the XIII Triennale di Milano (1964), a Golden Compass Award (1967) and the International Design Award in Chicago (1968). Initially, Joe Colombo had pursued painting and sculpture, and was part of the ‘movimento d?arte nucleare‘, a Milan-based artist group making art in response to the nuclear age.Joe Colombo.A foray into design in the early 1950s would see Colombo enrol as an architecture student at the Politecnico di Milano. Colombo’s father, a manufacturer named Giuseppe, owned a factory that produced electrical conductors. When Giuseppe became ill in 1958, Joe and his younger brother, Gianni, assumed responsibility for the family business. At the factory, they experimented with novel production techniques and materials, such as fiberglass, PVC and polythene. These materials were part of a new design revolution, presenting opportunities for experimentation and innovation, encouraged by a 1960s sense of utopia.Boby...