Regina Galvão

This is the word elected by Luciana Martins and Gerson de Oliveira to define ,Ovo, the renowned brand in Brazilian design confounded by the both of them three decades ago. Both of them having degrees in film, they go back and forth between art and industrial production with the same sharpness, without any restriction to materials, typologies, concepts, and scales. Quiet the contrary, according to their shared view, a chair can have sculptural shapes and at the same time a sculpture can become a table. In prodigious portfolio, we count 136 different pieces among furniture, objects, and lamps—both produced in series or in small, limited batches.

Always mindful of lifestyle changes, they spent the past two years devoted to launching their ,Ovo Public division for collective use spaces. In 2021, however the designers once again cast their eyes to the home, bringing wood, handmade techniques and a warm loving touch to the scene, aiming at suggesting proximity and coziness.

Their ideas are incepted and formatted at their shed in Santa Cecília, their studio’s headquarters located in that district of São Paulo City. Sketches, prototypes, and silhouettes of furniture pieces cut out from thick cardboard sheets are spread all over the place. Gerson sketches his design on tracing paper and later hangs them on the walls of his office. Luciana, on the other hand prefer to do the same using notebooks that pile high on her desk. The two of them get together three afternoons a week with their team to discuss and detail future items.

This year, the new pieces include the Paralelas and Equador chairs, the Diagonal sofa, and the Quilha table—all designs that have taken months to mature. “We don’t want to invent the wheel, but we do want to ‘narrate’ certain typologies in our own words,” says Gerson. “Our process consists in experimenting, tirelessly, with proportions, weights, materials, and the relationship between shapes.”

In their constant experimentation process, raw materials that had not been employed by the duo before emerge. “I like projects that give us things to do,” says Luciana while introducing more good news: cushion styles knitted by her with pure wool imported from Peru as well as the lines of porcelain glasses, plates, and bowls with special colors developed in a collaboration with ceramic artist Nydia Rocha, called Sílaba e Deslize.

These names were thought aiming at revealing certain poetics. “Literature is part of our daily lives, and it stimulates us when conceiving the names for each one of the pieces,” says Luciana. “This is another layer of our work. The duo’s cultural repertoire is actually quite wide, also influenced by film, drama, painting, and photography. For this creative pair, inspiration does not come from trends, but from the Zeitgeist.