"It is a fact that must be observed: after a certain silence, one sets out to write not a poem, but poems," wrote Cesare Pavese in one of the appendices to *Lavorare stanca*. This is perhaps the same principle that Ferruccio Laviani applies to the creation of his lamps. Each new idea does not lead to the design of a single product, but to a family of lamps, including floor, wall, and ceiling versions. Tobia, designed for Foscarini in 2019, is thus present in the catalog as both a floor lamp and a wall sconce. A bent metal tube forms a handle just over a meter from the ground. A double curve that becomes the heart of the design, providing the user with a firm grip to move the lamp. It is perhaps a tribute to Ettore Sottsass's Callimaco, an object the Cremona-born architect chose to keep in his studio on Via Mozart in Milan. But the references could be endless, because Laviani is difficult to pin down within a specific genealogy; like a DJ, he traverses genres and reinvents them, mixing the masters to create a new classic. The choice of material recalls the early days of industrial design—the dispute between Breuer and Stam over who first designed a tubular steel chair without the use of welds. The lamp's uninterrupted line evokes the handrails of the Milan Metro Line 1 by Albini and Helg, a graphic mark that can be sketched without ever lifting the pen from the paper, for those who, like Laviani, still draw their designs freehand. Tobia thus combines technology and aesthetics; Laviani elevates the sculptural value of the bent tube, and from that handle, the lamp could develop in any direction, because that simple gesture has already granted it the formal autonomy that every good design product aspires to have.
