FontanaArte at Euroluce 2017

The products from the 2017 collection draw upon the DNA of FontanaArte, which for 85 years has been producing timeless lighting objects that never go out of fashion, but soar unscathed above social transformations and constantly shifting tastes.

With this raison d’etre, the venerable Milanese lighting firm, founded in 1932 by Gio Ponti and Pietro Chiesa, has developed a series of new products that reassert the values of a style that rejects transient trends and, through exceptional design, focuses exclusively on beauty.

Drawing deeply from its own tradition of research and manufacturing know-how, FontanaArte rediscovers the splendor of glass and metal.Emerging as if reborn from the extraordinary FontanaArte archive is the nobility of glass, the originary soul of a company that started out as the artistic division of a glass factory.

Today, 85 years later, technology makes a wide variety of applications and techniques available, six in all: hand-blown and mold-blown, pressed and cased, sheet and thermoformed sheet glass. The metal elements are also exceptionally rich, with finishes in black chrome, gold, polished copper and a highly textured black that is poetic rather than ‘industrial’.
All the new products have LED light sources.

The new collection bears the signatures of 7 designers: 5 Italian and 3 foreign. Some of them are making their debut with FontanaArte in the world of design: the family Setareh by Francesco Librizzi, Pinecone by Paola Navone, Equatore by Gabriele and Oscar Buratti, Galerie by Federico Peri, Kanji by Denis Guidone from Italy; Optunia by Claesson Koivisto Rune, Heliacal by Os & Oos and Tripod by Front Design from abroad.

FontanaArte rediscovers its roots by revisiting some of the icons that earned it a place in the history of design and that have illuminated the spaces of our homes for decades. New editions of Bilia by Gio Ponti ( 1932 ), Naska ( 1933 ), Fontana by Max Ingrand ( 1954 ), Uovo ( 1972 ) and Nobi by Metis Lighting ( 1992 ) are now equipped with Led bulbs. Naska (now Led) has a new gold finish, Luminator by Pietro Chiesa (also Led) comes in two colors, Giova by Gae Aulenti has a new gold base and gray pulegoso glass.

These are the ageless Italian stars of international lighting design, the glamorous and immortal divas ( LEDive ) of the last century and the new millennium. A special mention goes to Metafora, the table lamp that architect Umberto Riva designed for FontanaArte at the height of the creative explosion of the early ‘80s, when Gae Aulenti became artistic director and wanted to set up a creative laboratory where established masters and young talents could freely reinterpret the company’s timeless values.