It’s one thing to design a product, but quite another to find a company that wants to market it. Maarten De Ceulaer’s recent collaboration with the Spanish lighting company Vibia is truly inspiring, and the idea first began to take shape during the Flanders DC Expert Day eighteen months ago. The result is the Gradient collection, presented at Milan Design Week.

Maarten De Ceulaer ‘s career as a designer began some years ago. We were introduced to him at Design Academy Eindhoven with his graduation project A Pile of Suitcases (2008), and during Art Rotterdam. He was immediately picked up by the well-known Milanese gallery Nilufar.

Shortly after he developed a close collaboration with Alexis Reyngaert of the Brussels design gallery Victor Hunt, with his Balloon Bowls. This was followed by other projects such as Liquid Lamps, Mutation Series and Transformations (for Fendi), which continued to set the tone. His experimental work was much admired and in 2012, it even earned him the prestigious Henry van de Velde Young Talent Award.

Maarten, who is passionate, demanding and a perfectionist, constantly experiments and innovates with shapes and materials, and never shies away from stepping outside his comfort zone. Thus he developed his distinct identity and finally felt ready after all this time, to shift his attention to industry. Ideally on an international scale.

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