Oluce

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 2 min read

Oluce is one of the companies that made the history of the design lamp in Italy. Its catalogue includes some of Joe Colombo's best-known pieces and Vico Magistretti's Atollo lamp, seen by many as the archetype of the modern table lamp.

Beginnings

The company was founded in 1945 by Giuseppe Ostuni. In 1951 it already took part in the 9th Milan Triennale with a floor lamp by Franco Buzzi, and in 1955 two lamps by Tito Agnoli were selected for the Compasso d'Oro. Agnoli's 255/387 lamp (1954) marked the shift from old fabric-shaded lamps to lighter, more modern lighting.

The Joe Colombo years

From 1962 Oluce produced the Acrilica by Joe and Gianni Colombo, a curved sheet of acrylic that carries the light to its edge, awarded a gold medal at the Triennale. In 1963 Marco Zanuso designed the 275 table lamp. With Joe Colombo came the Fresnel outdoor lamps, using pressed glass shaped as a Fresnel lens, the Spider family (1965), which won the Compasso d'Oro in 1967 and in 1972 was shown in the exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” at MoMA, and the Coupé (1967), with its large curved stem holding a semi-cylindrical reflector. After Colombo's death in 1971 came his Lampada alogena, produced from 1972, one of the first halogen lamps for the home.

Magistretti and the Atollo

In the 1970s Oluce passed to the Verderi family and Vico Magistretti became its art director and main designer. In 1977 he designed the Atollo, reduced to three geometric shapes, a dome that seems to float above a cone resting on a cylinder, in lacquered metal or opal glass: it won the Compasso d'Oro in 1979 and is in many museum collections.

Oluce today

Since the 1990s Hannes Wettstein, Riccardo Dalisi, Marco Romanelli and Toni Cordero have worked for Oluce. In 1997 the Estela lamp was the first industrially produced object by the Campana brothers. More recently the catalogue has opened to Francesco Rota, Harri Koskinen, Tim Power, Carlo Colombo and the Japanese studio Nendo.