Terzani

The Atlantis pendant uses more than four thousand metres of chain, woven by hand in the workshop. That figure describes Terzani better than any adjective would.

The skill goes back to Orlando Terzani, a master ironworker who made wrought iron objects for American distributors in the 1960s. His son Sergio founded the company in Florence in 1972. The first collections rested on three materials: wrought iron, carved Tuscan wood and Murano glass. The Paris designer Jean-François Crochet collaborated from the start, and his floor lamps from the 1980s now change hands as collector pieces.

The vocabulary has shifted towards hand-woven metal chain, brass, metal plated in nickel, copper or gold, and blown and cut crystal. On Mizu, designed by Nicolas Terzani, every crystal is shaped individually, so no two fittings are alike. Nicolas Terzani, born in 1974, is creative director. An in-house Terzani Lab works on marrying these hand processes to LED sources. Manufacturing and assembly stay at Scandicci, near Florence.

Artopia carries Terzani in Geneva. Sizes and finishes are configurable, so with pieces on this scale an order starts from the ceiling height and the fixing point.