Cecilia Rinaldi of Atelier Nuanda: An Emerging Italian Talent in Craft and Design
- Sep 17
- 5 min read
Cecilia Rinaldi, founder of Atelier Nuanda, is receiving international acclaim as one of the most promising emerging Italian designers. In 2025, AD Italia named her among the 13 rising talents redefining the future of Italian craftsmanship and contemporary design (see the article here). Her practice reflects a new wave in Italian design—where heritage meets experimentation, and artisanal mastery evolves into innovation.
Cecilia Rinaldi: Where Craft Meets Design
Founded in Bologna in 2022, Atelier Nuanda was conceived as a workshop where artisanal gestures and design thinking converge. Together with her husband, Cecilia has created a studio that produces limited-edition, handcrafted objects that tell stories through form and material.
Her vision reinterprets traditional craft with contemporary techniques—most notably her innovative woven leather design, a textile-like structure that transforms reclaimed leather into light, flexible, and highly expressive forms.
A Language Born from Materials
Experimentation is central to Cecilia’s design philosophy:
“The research and experimentation embodied in Nuanda’s creations lead to a reinterpretation of ancient techniques and decorations. Careful study in the choice of materials and their processing aims to highlight distant references, updated and made contemporary through the use of modern tools and techniques”
By transforming industrial surplus leather into thread, Atelier Nuanda’s practice merges sustainability with artistry. The result is a unique approach to sustainable Italian design, one that is as poetic as it is responsible.
In this exclusive interview for Avant Craft, Cecilia’s voice reveals the philosophy and sensitivity that shape her work at Atelier Nuanda. She reflects on her journey into design, her innovative use of materials such as woven leather and aluminum, and the intimate connection between tradition, memory, and contemporary craft.
How did you begin your path in design/craft?
My figure took shape over time, in close relation with what surrounded and influenced my journey. Curiosity and passion for different arts and customs always led me to discover what is hidden behind a crafted object, an architecture, an artwork, a thought, or an ideology. My passion for matter—its change and transformation into a new creation—led me to experiment with an innovative leather-working technique. This gave life to handmade design pieces characterized by a knitted textile structure and a completely new aesthetic. A technique that allowed me to look at the past, to the popular gestures of knitters, preserving their echoes while making them contemporary.
Which materials do you love most and why?
The project places leather at the center, reinterpreting its production process to create a new textile structure. The tightly woven pattern generates a unique fabric—resistant, flexible, and elastic in its use, appearance, and finish—becoming either structure or covering for furniture, fashion accessories, and decorative objects. Experimentation and a passion for lightness also led me to explore aluminum. Both materials belong to a supply chain that looks at sustainability: leathers recovered from industrial surplus are turned into thread, ensuring minimal waste in production; untreated natural aluminum is 100% recyclable.
Is there a philosophy or inspiration guiding your work?
Experimentation within craft allowed me to narrate my intimate vision of the world, expressed through memories, references, and people. Manual gestures consolidate emotions and lived experiences, shaping objects that become spokespersons of thought and ideals persisting beyond the passage of time.
A piece from MT55 collection and Plĭco, the folding cabinet by Atelier Nuanda.
Which piece are you most attached to, and what is its story?
The MT55 collection of ornamental garments signed Nuanda is the most intimate and representative of my past. Each creation tells of a fashion made of timeless textile structures, unique and refined pieces. Carefully crafted, each object carries a strong emotional bond, becoming a symbol of strength and inner beauty—a tribute to an extraordinary woman and mother, muse of elegance, tenacity, and femininity. With its dense woven pattern, leather becomes the structural backbone of a new weave to wear.
What does it mean to you to create in small batches or limited editions?
Believing in artisanal work means producing for the individual, for the final user—giving them the desired piece that embodies lived stories, cultural heritage, and traditions of a place. Every item, handmade in the atelier, is unique. The weaving preserves the emotions of its creator, giving life to authentic objects enriched with found items collected over the years, offering a personalized touch to every piece.
How would you like your work to be perceived by those who welcome it into their homes?
The design and aesthetics of each piece embody cultural influences of distant peoples and traditions, bound together in leather meshes to create a new object to live with.
How do you choose the working techniques for each piece?
Research and experimentation bring to life ancient techniques and decorations revisited. Careful study in the choice of materials and processes aims to exalt distant references, updated and made contemporary through modern tools and methods. Leather, knitted into new weaves, recalls past languages while enriching them with lightweight, flexible, and resistant finishes.
What role does tradition (local or family) play in your creative process?
Growing up in a family where artisanal gestures remain central to daily work gave me sensitivity and values that inform my creative process. Creating by hand, shaping my inner world and binding it to memories and traditions, is the engine of each project.
What do you seek to convey through your works?
The value of beauty, authenticity, and handmade craft—values I’ve always admired for their essence, rooted in the culture and history of our country. Looking at what surrounds us, at our past, in order to celebrate it and build our tomorrow: this is the true essence of making with one’s hands, an expression of being and of cultural continuity that persists beyond technological change.
Have you collaborated with other artisans or designers? If so, what did you learn from these experiences, and how has your aesthetic research evolved?
Collaborating with Giacobazzi Legno in 2022 allowed me to discover the properties of a noble material such as wood and enhance them within surfaces and coverings, giving life to the Arrocco Collection. This opened the theme of graphic design applied to wooden panels, redefining the perception of interior spaces as dematerialised carpets. Following this project, my experimentation shifted focus to textiles, exalting noble materials in new techniques of use.
Awards and International Recognition
In just a few years, Atelier Nuanda has earned prestigious recognition:
Amphora, winner of La Grande Bellezza – The Dream of Factory award (2024).
The folding screen Plĭco, awarded Best Unpublished Product at EDIT Napoli (2024).
Selection for Best of Both Worlds at the ADI Design Museum in Milan (2025), featured in the Sky Arte documentary Design. Waiting for the Future.
These achievements underscore Cecilia Rinaldi’s position as a leading emerging Italian design talent, bridging traditional techniques with contemporary visions.
Discover the Collection
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