De Padova is a Milan design company, founded in 1956 by Fernando and Maddalena De Padova with a showroom on Via Montenapoleone — at the time the first shop in Italy importing Scandinavian furniture and objects from northern Europe, introducing an entirely unfamiliar design language to Milan. In the 1960s Maddalena De Padova discovered the work of Charles Eames on a trip to America and concluded a production licence agreement with Herman Miller: in 1958 the couple founded ICF De Padova (in Vimodrone near Milan), which became the first company in Italy to produce Eames and Nelson furniture under licence. In 1984 Maddalena De Padova decided to divest the ICF brand and the Herman Miller licence and produce furniture and objects under the De Padova name: under the name Edizioni De Padova, designs created with Vico Magistretti, Achille Castiglioni, Dieter Rams and Pierluigi Cerri rejected the prevailing loud postmodern aesthetic of the time in favour of restraint, elegance and functionality. The new showroom on Corso Venezia became one of the most influential windows of Milanese design — known for Achille Castiglioni's installations that regularly attracted international audiences. In 2004 Maddalena De Padova received the Compasso d'Oro Carriera award. Succession: children Valeria and Luca De Padova. Acquisition by the Boffi Group 2015/2016; now presented as Boffi|DePadova. Art direction since approximately 2017: Piero Lissoni; showroom today: Via Santa Cecilia, Milan.

Designer portfolio (selection): Vico Magistretti (Louisiana armchair, Raffles sofa, Tani Moto shelving, Vidun table — "Vidun" is Milanese dialect for "big screw", named after the height-adjustment mechanism), Achille Castiglioni (Scrittarello writing desk), Dieter Rams, Ingo Maurer (with Jan Armgardt: Tattomi transformable armchair), Pierluigi Cerri, Renzo Piano (Cafeteria Centre Pompidou, Paris; restaurant Morgan Library, New York), Patricia Urquiola (Ola armchair), Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison, Michele De Lucchi, Nendo, GamFratesi, Keiji Takeuchi, Kensaku Oshiro, Omi Tahara, Maarten Van Severen (LC03, LL04 — reissues), Paul McCobb (reissues), Paul Smith (2022 collection). Production: Milan and former ICF site in Vimodrone, today fully renovated as company headquarters.

For architects and interior designers, De Padova is the oldest and most influential Milanese design house to have grown from northern European import to independent design production — with a collection that contains Magistretti's Louisiana armchair as well as Nendo's Japanist minimal forms and Paul Smith's colours, all united by Maddalena De Padova's immovable quality dictum: clear, restrained, timeless.