Foscarini

Foscarini calls itself “l'azienda senza fabbrica”, the company without a factory. Nothing is made in-house. Each lamp goes to the Italian workshop that holds the skill for its material: FAPS at Fiume Veneto for glass and carbon composites, Vetrofond at Casale sul Sile for blown glass, Crea at Darfo for cast cement.

The company began on Murano in 1981, inside the Venetian glass tradition. Carlo Urbinati and Alessandro Vecchiato, who had joined as designers, bought it in 1988. In the early 1990s they left Murano blown glass behind for industrial glass, polyethylene, polycarbonate, pressure-cast aluminium, composites and cement, and moved the office off the island to Marcon on the mainland.

That choice has a cost: development runs long. Marc Sadler's Mite took about three years of prototypes, using a blend of glass fibre with carbon or Kevlar thread borrowed from fishing rods and golf clubs. It won the company a Compasso d'Oro in 2001 alongside its sibling Tite. Twiggy, Sadler's arc-armed floor lamp of 2006, remains the best-known piece. Caboche, by Patricia Urquiola and Eliana Gerotto, is the other face of the catalogue.

Artopia carries Foscarini in Geneva.