Following the successful launch of “‘Fine Tuning’ by Claudia Moreira Salles” at ESPASSO, the limited-edition lighting collection, comes to South Florida this December featuring a new piece, “Fine Tuning: Remix,” exclusively for Design Miami/.
As with the entire collection, this lighting piece combines exotic reclaimed woods rich in grain and color, such as rosewood (jacarandá) and pine (pinho de riga), with Niobium (Nb), a rare element, in its purest state. The Niobium is transformed chromatically through electrolytic anodization, without added pigmentation. Often used in the tech industry, Moreira Salles introduced this unconventional application of the material as an element of design rather than scientific matter.
The production of Fine Tuning revealed recurring motifs in Moreira Salles’ work, addressing principles of contrast and harmony. A distinction in lightness and weight is found by contrasting the density of the lamp bases with light and airy shades, and the opaque tonality of the wood with the iridescence of Niobium elements. Each piece is a unique combination of reclaimed and rare materials.
Recognized among Brazil’s top contemporary designers, Moreira Salles creates pieces with clean geometry harmoniously pairing Brazilian hardwoods with contrasting materials such as concrete, stone, and metal.
Claudia Moreira Salles graduated in 1978 at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI) in Rio de Janeiro.
After working at the Design Institute of Rio's Museum of Modern Art, in a furniture project for public schools , she moved to São Paulo to become part of the design team of Escriba, a furniture company. At the same time she started developing more authoral projects relying on craftswork specially in wood. These first pieces, like the desk Canguru reedited in a new version in 2016 by Espasso, were showed by Fulvio Nanni who during the 1980s represented an independent generation of designers and their production.
Later she met Etel Carmona who had just started her own furniture manufacturing company dedicated to restore traditional woodworking techniques and to whom Claudia starts creating furniture allying the simplicity and rationality of an industrial product with the richness of Brazilian native woods and the skills of the woodworkers.
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