Martinelli Luce

Martinelli Luce is a Tuscan lighting company, born in Lucca and still based there. It is known above all for Gae Aulenti's Pipistrello lamp, but its catalogue is made of lamps with geometric, pared-down shapes, often inspired by nature, and of long experimentation with new materials and production processes.

Elio Martinelli's workshop

In the 1940s Plinio Martinelli had an electrical installation shop in the centre of Lucca. His son Elio had studied stage design and worked as an interior designer; after his father's early death he decided to continue the business, but in his own way: in the basement under the shop he opened a “workshop” where he began designing lamps. This is how Martinelli Luce was born in the 1950s. Later moved out of town, the company became a place of technical experimentation and adopted innovative materials such as acrylic.

Eurodomus and the Pipistrello

These lamps caught the attention of Gio Ponti, who in 1966 invited Elio Martinelli to take part in Eurodomus, the exhibition on the modern home: it marked the company's official entry into the world of Italian design. In the same years Martinelli produced the Pipistrello (1965), which Gae Aulenti had designed for the Olivetti showroom in Paris: a telescopic stem and an acrylic diffuser shaped like bat wings. It is still in production, and in 2026 a special version was released for the fortieth anniversary of the Musée d'Orsay, the Paris museum whose interiors Aulenti herself designed in the former Orsay station.

Martinelli Luce today

Today the company is led by Emiliana Martinelli, herself a designer, and her son Marco. Alongside the historic models it makes lamps for the home, for architecture and for outdoors, designed both by established names and by young designers. In 2023 Martinelli Luce was entered in Italy's special register of historic trademarks of national interest; it has showrooms in Lucca and Milan.

Sources

• Martinelli Luce – Chi siamo
• Wikipedia – Gae Aulenti
• Wikipedia – Gae Aulenti (it)