Caolina

Porcelain is an ancient and precious material. Porcelain is earth.

—Michele De Lucchi

Porcelain manufacture is a complex production process and when it's not made on industrial scale it requires very careful handling. For this reason many artisans opt for ceramic, due to its much simpler manufacturing procedure. Michele De Lucchi chose to work with this material in order to pair a modern lamp design with an traditional technique that needed revival and revolutionizing. The choice of the porcelain diffuser has additionally been made due to the poetic ambiguity of the material, which assumes transparency when the light is turned on, diffusing and regulating the light beams in a soft and sweet way unknown to any other material. Essentially, there was an aesthetic and functional necessity for a bell-shaped diffuser formed in a single piece and having an upper cone to integrate and accomadate the lamp-holder. A little suspending ring made of chromed metal puts an end to the strive for simplicity otherwise pursued in the design. The platinum edge on the lowest side of the lamp emphasizes with discretion the entire construction's basic geometry.