In Florence, a craftsman spent the sixties bending wrought iron into gift pieces for export. His son took the same hands and started making light.
Terzani is a Florentine story, and a family one. In the 1960s Orlando Terzani worked wrought iron by hand, making decorative pieces for export to the United States. His son Sergio took that training and, in 1972, turned it toward lighting, founding the company that still carries the name. The early pieces were what Tuscany knew, wood, iron and Murano glass, shaped the slow way.
What the house became is more unusual. Terzani stopped making lamps and started making light behave, treating a fitting as a piece of sculpture that happens to illuminate, working in shadow and movement as much as brightness. It does this by collaborating, inviting artists and designers, Dodo Arslan, Barlas Baylar, Gianluca Regazzo and others, to push the metal somewhere it has not been. The making stays in-house and stays by hand. A Terzani piece is assembled, not manufactured.
The current pieces are closer to commissioned art than catalogue lighting, priced and made to order rather than off a shelf. Atlantis, by Barlas Baylar, pours polished chain from the ceiling like falling water. These are not fittings you specify in a hurry. They are pieces you decide to build a room around, which is exactly why they belong in a conversation about commissioning.
