The fusion between art and design
Rome-based In-es.artdesign is a lighting design company that merges an artistic sensibility with design know-how. Founded in 2003 by artist-designer Luciano M. Mazzilli, its products are both functional and layered, many of them evoking such natural or existential phenomena as the waxing and waning of the moon or the passing of time. It’s no surprise then to find out that its lead designer, Oçilunam, also studied philosophy.
The name in-es is two-fold. On the one hand it stands for both interior and exterior (i.e. In-es.artdesign produces lighting for outside as well as indoors) but the name also plays with the idea of the external world of aesthetics and beauty versus the far more intimate, instinctive and primitive world of the Freudian id (Es) says Oçilunam. When asked where the inspiration for the objects comes from in the main he is equally enigmatic and compelling. “They happen by chance in the true Dadaist sense of the word,” he says. “Chance with its divine imperfections and the corrosive and smoothing intervention of time and its passing.”
Accordingly the lights produced by the company are at once functional and artistic and tactile and metaphorical. They range from the atmospheric Luna collection (made out of Nebulite, a bespoke blend of resin and fiber that replicates the crater-like and textured surface of the moon and creates striking dappled effects), created in 2003, to the recent Matt collection that comes in three finishes – cement, nebula and blackboard – and that won the German Design Award in 2015 and 2016 and the Iconic Award in 2016. The first finish uses a cement varnish to great effect; the second flaunts an almost marble-like exterior again made out of Nebulite; the third uses a blackboard finish, which can be written on and then erased, exactly like a blackboard. The lavagna (or blackboard) range was designed to evoke childhood games or memories of first days at school, it is a light made for the man or woman that still marvels at the world.
Another recent launch is the be.pop collection inspired by movements like pop art and bebop and composed of Laprene, a material similar to rubber. These pieces come mostly in urban monochromatic colors with bright electrical wires, all except for the signature piece in the collection, the cacio&pepe, made in electric colors and based on the famed Italian parmesan grater, that becomes a versatile piece that can be a pendant, a table lamp, a wall lamp, or even a sculptural installation when several models are hanging from a horizontal wire in a row.
The Trame range of lights, whose shades are made out of hand-knitted fabric that is immersed in resin, looks at once hand-crafted and soft while being hard to the touch and they cast beautiful geometric shadows on the walls once lit. Another version of Trame is covered in striped coloured yarn created especially for In-es.artdesign by sartorial workshops; this one combines the shimmering play of light-and-shadow with wondrous chromatic effect.
A few items are produced in limited edition and celebrate the art-design ethos even more. In these instances certain pieces from the collection are selected and transformed. An example of one such piece is the H2O Unica where an H20 light was lined inside with a dense collage of stained tea bags that were laid to resemble a cladding of weathered pebbles and give the light interior a highly tactile look and feel.
A distinctive trait of the firm is the careful attention to the details, and to the selection of the materials. Each product is made by In-es.artdesign’s factory in Rome (Italy) and goes through a strict quality control to guarantee its excellence.
