My name is Daniele Beconcini, DOC Tuscan Man, born in Fucecchio and raised in a small town on the edge of the province of Florence. Since more than 20 years I live in Pistoia in the heart of Tuscany.
I love the manipulation of materials and the ductility of iron which, since childhood, has been the main accomplice of my creativity and today is a fundamental protagonist in my work.
How LampaDani was born
LampaDani was born in 2001, when I was in my early twenties! I could already feel an urge in my hands, which I only realised later was a desire to communicate. I knew I had manual dexterity but I still didn’t understand how to turn it into a creative tool!
In the early years I looked around and started experimenting with various materials, I focused on those to which I would have easy access, and this is where iron and my father’s mini-workshop came in.
As a child in that space I enjoyed making very rudimentary toys, slingshots, swords, shields, even stilts.
It was my father who taught me how to make tools, using old objects that are no longer useful for their original purpose, but which become raw material in the hands of a creative person.
I often tell of the wheelbarrow made using the wheels of an old bicycle and the bed frame: in my childhood memories there are many of these ‘Frankenstein’s Monsters‘, ugly but indispensable in the jobs for which they were created!
I don’t think of myself as a blacksmith; I prefer to think about myself as a creative person, using various materials and techniques to shape my ideas.
The workshop
The need to make specific tools to perform certain processes is also what all people who work with their hands have in common. Although I use many tools used by blacksmiths, I do not consider myself a blacksmith, I prefer to define myself as a creative person, who uses various materials and techniques to give shape to his ideas.
In 2001 I decided to show my first creations at the craft market during the Pistoia Blues festival:
Although made with an uncertain technique, I realised that those objects moved people and that the message I wanted to communicate managed to reach the eye of the beholder.
That is how my works began to inhabit the homes of LampaDani’s customers.
Those first consents served to lay the foundations to open the first LampaDani workshop open to the public in 2007. Over the years I have taken part in various exhibitions, making my creations known beyond the regional borders, and I have realised all kinds of projects, indulging even the most extravagant ideas of customers who wanted my works for their homes, or to promote their own business.
From Pistoia to the world
On more than one occasion I have created business logos, projects entirely conceived by customers or interventions on existing objects, but the real turning point was the growing evolution of the Internet and the advent of social networks, which allowed my creations to be seen even by eyes thousands of kilometres away. In fact, shortly after that first marketplace in 2001, the first official LampaDani website was born, which collected the catalogue of the creations I made over time.
That’s how the on-line sale started, which in the beginning was only done through an exchange of e-mails. I still remember the first sale made abroad: the customer wanted 2 bedside lamps and lived in England.
It was an immense thrill to prepare the box, gather all the necessary information for that new adventure, and what apprehension waiting for the delivery!
In 2018 I wrote: “LampaDani for the future looks beyond the Italian borders and dreams of bringing lightness and magic into many homes!”.
Today that dream has become reality, writing these lines I realise that now space has been freed up, there is a void that can accommodate a new dream to be realised in the near future.
Today I run my business in Pistoia, in via Dino Campana 162, where the workshop is located, where I welcome customers, make my creations and ship them all over the world, thanks to e-commerce and a shop on Etsy!
LampaDani products
A selection of my creations ready for purchase