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Inspired by the Italian word for mastery and skill, Maestrie is a wide-ranging project by innovative Italian lighting company Foscarini that documents the craftsmanship and know-how behind their finished products. The aim of the project, which includes a book/catalogue with contributions by artist Gianluca Vassallo and photographer Massimo Gardone, is to look beyond the brand in order “to understand”, in the words of economist and university professor Stefano Micelli, “the values and culture that have made a particular object possible, the people and places that have gone into its creation”. There are two elemental things you need to know about Foscarini’s modus operandi: it is a product company with no factory and no in-house designers. Unconstrained from proprietary production facilities, it has the freedom to select the most appropriate materials and production methods to bring new ideas to the market, which in turn gives creative freedom to the designers it works with. So over the years, Foscarini has developed an extensive network of small Italian manufacturing companies who have collaborated with more than 30 designers to enhance and complete their visionary work, producing over 60 families of lamps. It is the expertise of these craftsmen and artisans that Maestrie wants to showcase and celebrate. 
Maestrie, photo by Gianluca Vassallo © Foscarini 2017. 
Video of MAESTRIE - The curtain rises Maestrie | The curtain rises A short movie by Gianluca Vassalo. Produced by White Box Studio for Foscarini SPA Written, directed and edited by Gianluca Vassalo Director's Assistant Cesare Azzolini. Sound Design by Francesco Liotard. Music by Gianluca Vassalo. Executive Producers Maddalena Satta and Franscesco Mannironi. Maestrie is a photographic project by Gianluca Vassallo and Massimo Gardone with critical contributions by Stefano Micelli and Manolo De Giorgi. 
Maestrie, photo by Gianluca Vassallo © Foscarini 2017. Video of MAESTRIE - The curtain rises Maestrie | The curtain rises Aplomb A short movie by Gianluca Vassalo. Produced by White Box Studio for Foscarini SPA Written, directed and edited by Gianluca Vassalo Director's Assistant Cesare Azzolini. Sound Design by Francesco Liotard. Music by Gianluca Vassalo. Executive Producers Maddalena Satta and Franscesco Mannironi. Maestrie is a photographic project by Gianluca Vassallo and Massimo Gardone with critical contributions by Stefano Micelli and Manolo De Giorgi. Foscarini’s uncompromising design and production process allowed the company to look beyond the glass-manufacturers in Murano, Venice, where it was founded in 1981, in order to experiment with new materials and forms. What followed was a journey of innovation, starting in 1992 with Ferruccio Laviani’s Orbital lamp that used industrial glass instead of blown glass, and moving on to include polyethylene inJozeph Forakis' Havana lamp in 1993, a mix of fibreglass and carbon fibre in Marc Sadler’s Mite lamp in 2000, and even concrete, used in 2010 to manufacture the Aplomb lamp. The development of the Aplomb lamp is indicative of Foscarini’s creative relationship with their production partners but also demonstrates, as Stefano Micelli writes in his essay for Maestrie “The curtain rises”, “the artisanal know-how that is the foundation of the success of so many of the high-quality furnishings of Made in Italy”. Developed by design duo Lucidi Pevere as a funnel-shaped pendant lamp made out of a thin layer of concrete, Foscarini turned to Crea, a small family business of seven employees in the province of Brescia. Crea's founder Giovanni Piccinelli’s first response was that it was impossible to manufacture, yet as Foscarini’s founder and president Carlo Urbinati explains, “when our production partners tell us ‘it can’t be done’, we immediately understand that we are on the right track”. 
It took approximately two years of experimentation to get the right thickness and to develop a suitable manufacturing process but the result was definitively worth the effort. But more than the creation of an innovative and stylish new product, the collaboration resulted in Crea being transformed from a company which focused on construction to a leader in the field of design for concrete products. Aplomb’s development echoes that of Mite whose designer Marc Sadler has admitted that major “unreasonable leaps” are needed to discover the potentialities of materials and technologies. It also encapsulates Foscarini’s mastery in combining automation and digital rationalisation with the experience and manual skill of classic artisans, and in a broader sense how Italian products have always been “designed as industrial but were actually hand-crafted”, as pointed out by artist and furniture designerEnzo Mari to architect and Maestrie contributorManolo De Giorgi. Catalytic to Foscarini’s manufacturing ethos was the development of the Lumiere table lamp, designed by Rodolfo Dordoni in 1990 in collaboration with glass manufacturer Vetrofond,which combines the craftsmanship of the Venetian glass tradition with the industrial workmanship of aluminium. The lamp is still manufactured in Vetrofond’s Casale sul Sile workshop along with newer products like Tartan, a suspension lamp with a blown glass diffuser that features a perpendicular crisscross pattern reminiscent of Scottish woolen kilts, and Gregg, a series of bubble-like table, wall and ceiling lamps in free-blown glass. 
Video of MAESTRIE - The curtain rises Maestrie | The curtain rises Mite / Tress / Twiggy A short movie by Gianluca Vassalo. Produced by White Box Studio for Foscarini SPA Written, directed and edited by Gianluca Vassalo Director's Assistant Cesare Azzolini. Sound Design by Francesco Lio |
