Catellani & Smith inscribes an artisanal lighting design on the ancient materia of San Gimignano, transforming the new Lunaria Tuscany winery into a dialogue between medieval history and contemporary conviviality.
A new intervention is inscribed in ancient stone. At Lunaria Tuscany, a meticulous renovation by FGC Loft becomes a canvas for the artisanal lighting of Catellani & Smith. The project: a poetics of light that bridges the feudal past with an enveloping present.
A Glimmer Among the Towers
To approach San Gimignano is to witness a vertical apparition against the Sienese hills. Its 14 remaining tower-houses are proud, austere symbols of feudal power, built on the wealth of the Via Francigena and precious golden saffron.
Just a stone’s throw from that defiant verticality, Lunaria Tuscany establishes a new horizontal plane. A historic structure, brought back to life by the vision of owners Swan and Pascaline, it is a space designed for internal, authentic conviviality.
The project’s conceptual brief is its name. Lunaria, from the Latin luna (moon), evokes the honesty flower, a concept built entirely on reflected, indirect, and atmospheric light. It was a fated premise for the intervention of Catellani & Smith, a design house built on the philosophy of refracted light and the separation of the source from the illuminated object. The very name called for a moon-like solution.
The Matter of History
The interiors, entrusted to Willy Calabrese of FGC Loft, are a masterful exercise in conservare innovando—innovating by conserving. The sartorial joinery rejected the white box. Instead, it celebrated the authentic Tuscan materia as the protagonist.
The canvas is a rich, tactile palette: warm terracotta floors, expansive red brick vaulted ceilings, and ancient, load-bearing stone walls. Deeper still, a Cave carved directly from the tuff rock.
The architectural choice is the project’s foundational thesis. The architecture is not a passive container, it is an active component of the lighting apparatus. The irregular, porous, and history-laden surfaces are the essential medium. The walls themselves become part of the lamps.
The Poetics of the Artisan
To understand the light at Lunaria is to understand the mind of Enzo Catellani. His philosophy, born from spontaneous experiment, rejects industrial uniformity in favor of soul. “I’m not a designer,” he famously states. “I’m a person who loves what he does.” His philosophy centers on “hands that shape light.”
The Made in Italy approach means small imperfections are not a default but a characteristic of the artisanal work.
At Lunaria, that philosophy manifests in a single, unifying leitmotif: gold leaf. For Catellani & Smith, gold is a conceptual medium, a reflection on the golden light of the sun and fire. The hand-applied gilding, with its deliberately irregular surface, is designed to catch, multiply, and refract light.
The artistic gold creates a powerful, three-fold synthesis, echoing the historical golden saffron of San Gimignano, complementing the architectural golden glow of terracotta and the amber hues of wood, and serving as the physical manifestation of Catellani’s warm, refined atmosphere.
A Scenography of Gold
The 900-square-meter venue is not merely lit; it is curated. The lighting plan by Catellani & Smith is a scenography that guides the visitor on an emotional journey, modulating the atmosphere from the grandly social to the primally intimate.
The Atrium: A Scenographic Welcome
The grand entrance, an embrace of terracotta, brick, and stone, required a warm, refined atmosphere. The visual hierarchy is immediately established by the protagonist: Macchina della Luce. The design icon, a reflection on the concepts of colore and calore of light, floats beneath the vaults. Its large discs, lined in gold-colored leaf, project light upwards, activating the brick with a diffuse, golden and poetic light.
On the mezzanine walls, PostKrisi 70 adds a layer of shadow play. The fiberglass half-spheres, with jagged, fringed edges, splash the rough stone with an evocative interplay of light and shadow. The scenography is completed by the intimate, tactile GiuliettaBE portable lamps and the discreet, theatrical EC301 spotlights.
The Barrel Galleries: Rhythmic Contemplation
Moving into the galleries, once home to prized oak casks, the atmosphere shifts to one of calm. Here, the eye is drawn to the sculptural, hand-worked gold-leaf disc of Bellatrix. Named for a star in the Orion constellation, the 120 cm wall lamp resembles a golden full moon. Its adjustable light is precisely oriented by a flexible arm to enhance the amber hues of the wood and the curves of the vaulted ceiling. A measured rhythm of custom EC301 spotlights accentuates the architectural procession of the arches.
The Cave: The Primal Sanctum
The journey concludes in the winery’s intimate sanctum—a space carved directly into the tuff rock. Here, a single, iconic Stchu-Moon 01 floor lamp creates the conceptual climax. Following Catellani’s core philosophy of separating the source from the object, the lamp—a matt black hemisphere whose interior is an irregular surface lined with gold coloured leaf—illuminates only itself.
The result is pure alchemy. Shimmering golden reflections animate the raw, porous walls of the tuff. The refracted light forms a moonlike light. It is the perfect, intentional poetic statement: the Stchu-Moon (the moon lamp) inside Lunaria (the moon venue), creating a quiet atmosphere that invites contemplation.
The New Conviviality
The collaboration between visionary owners, the materially-sensitive FGC Loft, and the artisanal maestro Enzo Catellani achieves the essential balance of preserving rich heritage while infusing it with a modern vibrancy.
The artisanal lighting design by Catellani & Smith is the agent of this synthesis. It is an alchemical transformation. The light takes the passive, ancient materia—tuff, brick, stone—and converts it into an active medium for a new, poetic, and intangible experience. The shimmering golden reflections are a new, permanent layer of the genius loci, as essential to the experience of Lunaria as the medieval towers standing sentinel just beyond the walls.
Photo by Luciano Paselli