Orange Pendant Lamp by Elio Martinelli for Martinelli Luce, 1970s

Elio Martinelli was born on November 19, 1922. After a childhood and adolescence spent in Lucca, he undertook scenography studies in Florence where he graduated. Taking over the family business after the premature loss of his father, he began a collaboration with a company in Lucca for which he took care of the interior design for public places. He began to design and produce his own lamps to be included in his projects. This is how Martinelli Luce was born, in a basement located in Piazza Bernardini in Lucca with the few tools necessary for a small production. He married Anna in 1949, and together they began to participate in the most important trade fairs of that period, but it was with the first edition of Eurodomus in Genoa in 1966 and the meeting with Giò Ponti that Elio Martinelli and his company acquired a international prominence. In his professional life Elio Martinelli has designed many lamps and to create some of these he had to study new methacrylate molding techniques. We are in the 1960s, the era of the affirmation of innovative and revolutionary plastic materials and it was precisely in plastic material that the
most representative lamps of his production. Attention to technology and novelty has always characterized Elio Martinelli’s interest, not only for the materials of which the lamps were made, but also for the use of new light sources. Since the 1970s, the classic light bulb has been increasingly replaced by halogen and metal halide lamps which lead to a real revolution in the lighting of commercial spaces. We are at the beginning of the 80s when Elio Martinelli designs his first technical devices collected in a specific catalog called “Systems”. It is precisely in these years that his daughter Emiliana enters the company, initially mainly interested in the graphic part and then moving on to Thus we come to the 90s, Martinelli Luce has a consolidated role in the panorama of manufacturers of lighting fixtures and given the difficulties of the internal market it is projected even more towards abroad and towards the lighting of large commercial spaces also with productions dedicated to contract Elio martinelli passed away on 21 October 2004 after an illness that had forced him in recent years to often stay away from that creature to whom all his thoughts were however directed.