Johannes Kiniger and Giulia Farencena Casaro are the founders and creative team behind High Society, a sustainable design start-up based in Italy
High Society Hemp Pendants
Johannes Kiniger and Giulia Farencena Casaro are the founders and creative team behind High Society, a sustainable design start-up based in Italy. High Society creates plant-based lighting products using post-industrial waste.
Taken from hemp leftovers, discarded leaves, and stalks from tobacco cultivation, and pomace made using the solid remains of wine production.
High Society Tobacco Pendats
High Society Tobacco Material
Johannes is a maker who combines technical knowledge with handcrafting. After working several years for an electrical engineering company, he found he was missing a connection to the environment. Looking for a more biophilic profession, Johannes decided to quit his job and founded his start-up High Society in 2015. He continually researches creative processes and crafts functional objects.
Giulia Farencena Casaro studied Fashion Design at Polimoda and always felt connected to the natural world experimenting with sustainable materials like bioplastics and vegetable-dyed leather in her collections. United by the love of healthy and sustainable living, she joined forces with Johannes to create an eco-friendly furniture studio. She takes care of the creative direction and the design research and development.
High Society Pendants and Materials
All the pendants are elegant and minimalist suspension lamps, designed to suit any commercial or residential interior space. The ceiling canopy of each light is made from matt black coated iron with a cotton cord. Every High Society pendant is unique.
Each light sold by High Society supports initiatives against drug dependency, in collaboration with Forum Prävention in Bolzano, NE Italy.
HIGHLIGHT HEMP. Each pendant is made from industrial hemp harvest leftovers. The small hemp pieces are compression-molded by adding a bio-based binder and finished applying a natural wax coating to protect the surface from moisture. The surface pattern of each lamp is random as it’s not possible to determine pattern repetition, making every piece unique.
High Society Wine Pendants
HIGHLIGHT WINE. The Highlight Wine pendants are made from “pomace,” the by-product of wine production. The pomace leftovers are collected from a local biologic winery in South-Tyrol, Italy. These residues were compression-molded adding a bio-based binder and finished applying a natural wax coating that provides a shiny surface and protects the surface from humidity.
High Society Pendants
HIGHLIGHT TOBACCO. Italy is the 10th largest world tobacco producer. High Society collects the waste from an Italian supplier from the Venetian region who cultivates Tobacco without additives. Tobacco such as leaves and stalks are then mixed with a bio-based binder and compression molded to give birth to our pendant lamps. Its natural beeswax finishing provides a smooth and shiny surface and protects it from moisture.
For information contact High Society.
