Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi (1767-1855) was a Genoese furniture maker, best known as the inventor of the Chiavari chair.
Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi was born in Chiavari in the Republic of Genoa in 1767, the son of a cooper. He was called "il Campanino" ("the bell ringer") because his grandfather was the bell-ringer of the Bacezza church. Descalzi was apprenticed to one of the best master carpenters of Chiavari, and became a master craftsman himself. In 1795 the Descalzi brothers opened a furniture workshop. In 1796 he received a silver medal for two wooden chests of drawers from the Chiavari Società Economica, which had been founded five years earlier by the Marquis Stefano Rivarola.