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SILVER Seller in Padova, Italy
Orange pendant lamp by Elio Martinelli for Martinelli Luce, 1970s. Elio Martinelli was born on 19 November 1922. After a childhood and adolescence spent in Lucca, he studied set design in Florence where he graduated. Taking over the family business after the untimely loss of his father, he began a collaboration with a company in Lucca for which he designed interiors for public premises. He began to design and produce his own lamps for inclusion in projects. Thus Martinelli Luce was born, in a basement located in Piazza Bernardini in Lucca, with the few tools necessary for a small production. He married Anna in 1949 and together they began to participate in the most important trade fairs of the time, but it was with the first edition of Eurodomus in Genoa in 1966 and the meeting with Giò Ponti that Elio Martinelli and his company gained international prominence. In his professional life, Elio Martinelli designed many lamps and had to study new methacrylate moulding techniques to make some of them. We are in the 1960s, the era of the affirmation of innovative and revolutionary plastic materials, and it is precisely in plastic that the most representative lamps of his production were born. Attention to technology and novelty has always characterised Elio Martinelli's interest, not only in the materials the lamps were made of, but also in the use of new light sources. Starting in the 1970s, the classic light bulb was increasingly replaced by halogen and metal halide lamps that led to a real revolution in the lighting of commercial spaces. It was in the early 1980s when Elio Martinelli designed his first technical devices collected in a specific catalogue called 'Sistemi'. It was during these years that his daughter Emiliana joined the company, initially interested mainly in the graphics part. So we arrive at the 1990s, Martinelli Luce has a consolidated role in the panorama of lighting fixture manufacturers and, given the difficulties of the domestic market, is projected even more towards foreign markets and the lighting of large commercial spaces, also with productions dedicated to contract Elio martinelli passed away on 21 October 2004 after an illness that had forced him in recent years to stay away from that creature to which all his thoughts were nevertheless turned.
ID: 16769-1681231858-61371
