Stilnovo, a famous lighting brand that has been on the scene from the 1950s through the 1980s, is still a benchmark in the history of Italian lighting design.
Today, in 2018, Stilnovo is operating with a new corporate structure, strongly motivated to relaunch this brand, which has a formidable catalog featuring lighting fixtures conceived by the most prestigious Italian designers.
Founded by Bruno Gatta in 1946, Stilnovo has been the most significant presence in the designer lighting landscape for decades. Laboratory and forge of ideas; since the reconstruction years and the first economic boom Stilnovo has attracted the interest of the historic “Domus” magazine, becoming an essential point of reference for the most prestigious names of Italian design, such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Joe Colombo, Danilo and Corrado Aroldi, Roberto Beretta, Antonio Macchi Cassia, the De Pas D’Urbino Lomazzi studio, Ettore Sottsass, Cini Boeri, and Gae Aulenti who have all designed memorable pieces for this small, Milan-based company. Examples include Periscopio, Manifesto, Nuvola, Multipla, Bridge, Topo, Lampiatta, Lucetta, and on to the lighting systems Trepiù and Gomito – excellent examples of a highly successful production chain that caters to the most varied forms and uses: from private interiors to public spaces. The working team has already produced a Manifesto that defines the necessary guidelines and criteria for future creations, specifying the connotations of a brand identity that never forgets its historical roots but rather exalts them.
The reissue of important iconic products and the involvement of new figures in Italian and international design in the development of unprecedented objects are just some of the projects on the Stilnovo agenda, always guaranteeing a 100% Made in Italy product. Among the most recent reissues we find the iconic Piega lamp, designed in 1984.
The designer Giorgio De Ferrari says: “That ‘piega’ (fold), on the diagonal relative to the configuration of the whole, characterizes its expression and determines its function.” It is that “something” that Achille Castiglioni, De Ferrari’s teacher, called the principal component of design.
Recently, the Valigia lamp by Ettore Sottsass was also reissued on the centenary of his birth. Valigia is a Sottsass design that was produced by Stilnovo in 1977, designed with the irony and unusual use of color that distinguishes his work.
Photo by Gianni Antoniali
