Mattina Moderna: Lamps from the Riviera, Made Slowly

The first lamps were not theirs. In 2020, between the lockdowns, Clémentine Poncin and her mother started looking for old lamps and objects on the French Riviera, where they are from. “It really began as a hobby,” Clémentine writes on the studio's site, a way of reconnecting with the region and with each other.

The finds went out to the studio's followers, and the demand for one-off pieces grew. The next step was the shade: with a local artisan, mother and daughter began making custom lampshades from deadstock fabric, cut to fit the bases they had thrifted. “One thing leading to another,” in spring 2022 they launched their own line of table lamps.

Ceramics came first because it was already in so much of what they had been collecting. Clémentine describes it as having “that timeless and humble feel, rooted in tradition and a shared past.” The bases are hand-painted earthenware, made by artisans in Portugal. The shades are handcrafted in Portugal or in Łódź, in Poland, depending on the model, and the fabric changes from one edition to the next.

Mattina Moderna works in two steps. Every piece is first built as a 3D model, then made by hand, in small quantities and mostly to order, and custom requests are possible. “For us, that's what slow-design is about,” Clémentine writes: “create the right number of pieces, with heart and extreme care”.

'Caterina' is the studio's signature lamp: a two-toned, hand-painted earthenware base under a distinctive conical shade. Its colourways pair forest green with pale green, ristretto with butter yellow, or syrah with cognac, some of them under a tartan or a textured linen shade.

'Giro' is taller, with a fabric shade over its earthenware base, somewhere between cottage and classical. One edition sets a treetop-green base under a beige textured cotton; another pairs a chartreuse base with a floral cotton jacquard.

'Ombrellina' belongs to the Renaissance collection. The studio says it draws less on the great masters than on the domestic side of the period: the colours of dark wooden furniture, the faded plaster of Florentine houses, the Tuscan countryside in late summer. Its painted bases, some of them striped, carry a wide shade in cotton twill, cotton or velvet.

'La Petite Boîte', made by hand in Łódź, is the most minimal of them: two cubes that can line up or turn away from each other and play with angles and shadow. Their inner structure is covered in designer deadstock fabrics, from tartan to leopard and polka dots.

And then there is 'Marcello', the studio's first piece of furniture, a stool or a side table, hand-crafted in Portugal. It comes in lacquered MDF in any RAL colour, in expanded black cork, or in a two-toned stripe of mahogany veneer and tola wood. The cork is expanded with water vapour and bound by its own resins.

Every piece is made by hand, so small differences in shape and colour are part of it, and each one ships directly from the studio to its buyer.

Clémentine's husband has since joined the studio, which is still a family project. “Today, Mattina Moderna continues to explore the relationship between colour, material and memory,” says Clémentine, “creating playful yet familiar objects that bring together traditional craftsmanship, unexpected textile combinations and a distinctly contemporary sensibility.”

Photos: Mattina Moderna.