Pesce is known for innovative high-minded modern design with wit and style. Pesce has challenged accepted standards of abstraction, uniformity, and homogeneity. On the architect designer, critic Susan Slesin wrote, "For Gaetano Pesce, to be modern is to face the world squarely and use design as a means to comment on it. Pesce has expanded the established notions of Modernism through the creation functional, imperfect, and warm product design. He connects art and society to design through organic form, for production by B&B Italia (formerly C & B Italia), Vitra, Cassina, and fabric design, such as People (1987), composed of 570 different figures, all of which incorporate ideas about variation and diversity in contemporary society. Pesce's iconic feminist armchair - a fulsome bulbous form and attached ball-shaped ottoman - alternately referred to as La Mamma, Big Mama, Donna, and Up chair - continues to inspire interpretation nearly 50 years after its creation. According to curator and author of SuperDesign, Maria Cristina Didero, "Pesce wanted to produce something about the condition of women in the world. The chair can be read as the mother, and the stool her child. But it could also be a ball and chain [suggesting] woman and the prison she was obliged to live in." Pesce is perhaps best known for his work with resin, molds, and casting techniques used to create objects, including vases, chairs, lamps and the two-dimensional reliefs that the designer calls “industrial skins.” Since 1987, he has infused ordinary materials with experimental additives, such as liquid plant resin, and worked with foam and urethane, simplify the manufacturing processes and adapt limited industrial capabilities. Pesce credits the early influence of his student work with three venerable Murano glassmakers — Moretti, Vistosi, and Venini — whose casting techniques for informing his label-defying works of sculpture, furniture, vessels and paintings. Even Pesce's own experimentation in glassmaking has led to inventive techniques and highly original results. Pesce has even used urethane resin to create necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and rings. For Pesce, the design and development of portable goods have always incorporated craft-specialization, history, humor, and the human need for connection. Pesce's industrial design techniques such as diversified series production is a process by which he experiments with materials using a craft manufacturing sensibility applied to mass production methodology. On the production line, for example, factory workers vary proportions to produce a series of objects with a "one