Astrid Luglio

Italian designer Astrid Luglio was born in Naples in 1988. She studied at NABA—the New Academy of Fine Arts—in Milan, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Product Design in 2011. After graduating, Luglio freelanced for clients in Milan and then moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2014, where she continued to work as a freelance designer for local studios. Upon returning to Italy the following year, Luglio began working with Milan-based TourDeFork, a culinary creative consultancy and design studio inspired by food and culinary culture. Luglio founded her own independent design studio in 2016 and continues to work with clients in Milan, as well as Oslo and Naples.

Luglio describes her work as “essential and delicate” and is inspired by, as she puts it, “the world around the table.” Each piece that she works on represents a focus on the experience that that piece should generate; it is very much an approach that must be experienced with all the senses and, preferably, in the context of a shared meal. The individual pieces in the Disordine (2017) collection of glass tableware, for example, do not conform to any commonly held definition of a dining set. Each piece is freely shaped to shift between functions: a glass that could be a bowl; a vase that could be a decanter; an egg cup that could be a serving bowl if turned over. For Luglio, the experience of inventing, or defining, the use of each object and combining or layering pieces together with a group around the table is as essential as the exquisite forms and delicate colors of the pieces themselves.

In 2017, Luglio collaborated with Turin-based perfume maison, Tonatto Profumi to create the Philtrum Collection Glass—a specially designed glass ‘taster’ for fragrances—and Philtrum Collection Brass (2017), a floor lamp that uses the heat of the light to spread scent through the room. The innovative collections were debuted at Operae 2017 and were also shown at Milan Design Week and at the Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair 2018. Luglio is also part of an ongoing collective, called The Ladies' Room, with fellow designers Ilaria Bianchi, Agustina Bottoni, and Sara Ricciardi.