- +39 351 928 8371
- info@oldera.it
- Monday - Friday: 9:00 - 18:00
Martinelli's futuristic cobra
The transforming table lamp
La Cobra lamp was conceived in 1968 by Elio Martinelli, the lighting designer. Born in Lucca in 1922, he graduated in Scenography from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He designed interiors for public spaces when the issue of lighting became increasingly important. He designed and produced his own Martinelli lamps for his projects, beginning his design journey in a basement in Piazza Bernardini in Lucca, the "Laboratory" where Elio's ideas were born.
La Cobra lamp by Elio Martinelli, with its sinuous and dynamic lines, represents a successful mix of creative intuition and experimental production. In the early 60s, the enthusiasm for the economic boom spread across all sectors, with that forward-looking positivity typical of the Italian boom.
In this case, Martinelli went beyond traditional techniques by using polymers, a material that was generating great interest in Italy. It may be a coincidence, but just one year later, in 1963, Giulio Natta of the Milan Polytechnic would be awarded the Nobel Prize for his studies on plastics. In a less theoretical and more direct manner, Martinelli had instead created one of the first lamps produced with a special molding system: two bodies were molded entirely in white resin for Cobra.
Cobra was ahead of its time, expanding the formal and material repertoire of its lighting fixtures. This swivel table lamp, with direct downward light, conceals brilliant geometric solutions behind its immediacy.
“Just a single rotation is enough for the shape of this lamp to change from a reassuring table lamp to the futuristic wriggle of a cobra ready to attack.”
Its shape can be inscribed within a sphere, the simple but at the same time perfect and non-replicable geometric shape from which Cobra was born. Martinelli's lamp However, it can change its configuration through the independent rotation of the base and reflector. The result is an unexpected movement effect, which can change the size of the lamp with a simple gesture, without altering its harmony: the Cobra design This makes it a “transformer” lamp. A simple rotation changes its appearance, transforming its reassuring spherical profile into a vibrant “S.”
A sinusoidal configuration that seems to crystallize the leap of a cobra poised to strike. A powerful, organically inspired graphic sign that reinterprets the multiplicity of natural forms through the aid of technical progress.
Martinelli Luce It also produced the Cobra lamp in a limited edition 'total black' version and a red one with an internal reflector in white painted aluminium, celebrating its 50 years of production.
