Lumina Italia

His original insight - “Lots of light, not much lamp” – is still the inspiration and mission at Lumina: to design lighting products in which function generates form and technology is at the service of performance and durability.

It was Tommaso Cimini who created the famous Daphine lamp, the company’s signature product and an icon of Italian design. The first prototype “saw the light” in 1975, in his workshop in Sedriano (a few kilometres from Arluno), where he ingeniously retooled his machines to produce that sober and innovative lamp. It was characterized by three basic elements: a slender articulated arm, a small adjustable diffuser and a transformer, deliberately unconcealed, on the base. 45 years on, the Daphine is still admired and used all over the world and features in the permanent collections of major design and contemporary art museums (Brooklyn Museum and Judd Foundation in New York, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich and The Israel Museum in Jerusalem).

Thanks to loyalty to the spirit of its founder and rigorous production methods, Lumina has been able to establish prestige partnerships with designers and architects of international renown. First and foremost, Foster + Partners, which with Lumina have designed lamps of essential beauty characterized by highly sophisticated engineering, including the Eva (table) and its little sister Eve, Flo (reading, in different versions) and Dot, the ethereal pendant lamp.

Ettore Cimini, son of the founder and a designer himself, is now running the company faithfully in line with the original idea. Lumina’s strengths are its short supply chain, in-house engineering and prototyping, and a combining of avant-garde processes and artisanal care over detail. Thanks to all this, Lumina products stand out for their excellent durability and impeccable workmanship. Totally and proudly Made in Italy, its lamps are sold in 104 countries through an international network of select multi-brand retailers.

The company builds on its know-how by employing the methods and processes of circular economy: maximum focus on saving and recycling resources, selection of noble materials like aluminium, steel and glass (plastic only where indispensable), and designing lamps to last, repairable and with components fully disassemblable at the end of the product’s life (Design for Disassembly). Lumina is powered from renewable sources, having a solar power system covering its energy requirement.