Cristina Celestino
Antique Mirror

In the Antique Mirror factory, among towering sheets of glass and buckets of oxide coatings, Cristina Celestino is getting filled in on the secrets behind the beautiful mirrors she admires. Massimo Borgna, the company’s founder, is showing her how he’s been able to reintroduce magic into a product that, in his view, can suffer from too much industrial perfection. Borgna’s passionate words about ancient glass and alchemy don’t seem too lofty as they move among samples of the work, viewing the effects he and his artisans achieve. “I find the colours and textures of these mirrors really fascinating,” Celestino says. “A theme reflected through these surfaces takes on a new dimension: almost three-dimensional, dreamlike.”

For the project that they will do together, Celestino wants to work with the transparent trait she sees in some of Borgna’s products. But a new idea emerges when he shows her another technique they have developed. “Here the decorative details have been done with laser-cuts, similar to embrasures,” Borgna says. “The plan for our lamps was born from the union between the magic of mirrors and the application of modern technology,” says Celestino. For Borgna, the project is a new adventure, the first time he has worked in the world of lighting.  “I hope this is the starting point of a great collection,” he says. Celestino reflects on her day at the factory: “It was actually talking to those involved in the processes and learning the history of the product that makes it possible to use the materials to their fullest potential.”