2023-12-13 20:31:48
You can’t tell how long it took them to develop. “We started with them in 2011,” he says. And she adds: “They were finished in 2014.” The Spokes lighting family was also introduced for the first time that year. Of course in Milan, at the 53rd Salone del Mobile in April. García Cumini, just two years old, were overwhelmed by the response. Her design for the Foscarini brand was enthusiastically celebrated by design critics all over the world because, as was written on the Stylepark platform in Germany, the Spokes lamp was playfully objective and at the same time magically light. “But it was also an innovation,” he says. And she adds: “The highlight is that you can’t see any cables inside.”
Since then, García Cumini has been considered a lighting expert, but hardly anyone knows him. She is Cinzia Cumini and comes from Udine in northeastern Italy. He is Vicente García Jiménez and was born in Valencia, eastern Spain. The two come from different worlds in other ways too. Cinzia Cumini, born in 1974, studied social sciences and monument preservation. She graduated from the University of Udine with a dissertation on the importance of industrial design in today’s society. Vicente García Jiménez, born in 1978, is an engineer.
After studying in Castellón de la Plana, he went to Barcelona to work for the lighting manufacturer Santa & Cole. From there the route took him via Milan to Udine, where he soon met Cinzia Cumini. “Udine,” she says, “is small. We kept running into each other. At parties or at trade fairs.” There was also a starting point for García Jiménez: Cumini is the niece of the designer Giulio Ridolfo.
However, Cinzia Cumini was still married at the time and has a son who is now grown up. García Jiménez was engaged. “I actually wanted to go to France in 2008,” he says. “Cinzia then separated from her husband and she gave me her telephone number.” A little later the two became a couple, first privately and then also for business purposes. “We haven’t argued once in four years,” she says. “And so we thought that we could certainly work well together.” And it has been that way since 2012, the year when they founded their studio García Cumini in Udine.
Bicycle spokes as a source of inspiration
Their first work together, the Spokes lighting family, was a great success. The name alone provides information about their source of inspiration: they were the spokes of a bicycle. However, very few people think of this when they see the hanging lamp for the first time, as it is very reminiscent of the woven rattan balls that hung in many German bedrooms in the seventies and eighties.
García Cumini (Cinzia Cumini and Vicente García Jiménez) take their time with their designs. : Image: Frank Röth
But the special thing about Spokes is that the light source – in the case of the rattan dust catchers it was light bulbs – is not in the middle of the ball, which is easy to see through, but at the very bottom at the bottom. LED makes it possible. There’s also no cable to get in the way inside. The two LED modules, which can shine upwards and downwards, are powered with very low voltage from two opposing “spokes”.
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