Italian metalwork house De Castelli brings three pieces to Tollgard, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, featuring the newly launched Dorica sideboard alongside a wall light and a storage case.

Founded by Albino Celato, a fourth-generation blacksmith, the house treats metal as something to be coaxed rather than commanded – oxidised, hand-finished and patinated by degrees, in a practice it calls ‘hard couture’.

For Focus/26, running from 14-18 September, official UK partner Tollgard gathers three of the house’s pieces at its Design Centre Chelsea Harbour showroom, linked by one preoccupation: light.

Catching the light, the Dorica Sideboard has been designed by Francesco Forcellini to draw on the fluting of a classical Doric column, its face carved into vertical, concave slats. In DeFauvé stainless steel the surface never quite settles – light runs down each channel and shifts as the viewer crosses the room. The result reads as architecture rather than furniture: a rhythmic monolith with generous storage held behind the pattern.

Next, Adele Martelli’s Light & Shade gives light back. The wall lamp hides its source entirely, so illumination radiates from the circumference alone – soft, ambient and without a hard edge. In copper, brass or stainless steel, the luminaire becomes a wash of quiet light rather than a fixture to be noticed.

Finally, Celato has been conceived to keep its light to itself. A monolithic case clad in a panelled metal shell, it conceals its drawers within the body, revealing its function only in stages. The name – shared with the house’s founder – points to what is deliberately hidden to keep a memory intact. It is storage as an exercise in restraint, beauty disclosed slowly rather than declared.

Each piece is finished by hand and no two patinas are alike, so every one carries the mark of its making – a quality suited to the hospitality and contract settings where a single sculptural object is often asked to carry the character of a whole space.

www.tollgard.com