Relik is a design project based in Milan founded in 2025 by Ludovica Forino and Matteo Maggi.

The Debut collection , launched on March 12th in Milan, called “domestic spirits” consists of five sculptural candles, reflecting. Crafted in Cereria Introna, an artisanal workshop active in Bari since 1840, the series aims to portray a cycle from Monday to night, reflecting a non linear interpretation of time, through a design that blends “archaic sacredness” with contemporary influences like the queer culture and the post-digital imagery.

Each candle embodies a state of mind rather than a character, giving shape to impulses, excesses, calm and dissolution as surely temporary elements of the experience that are deposited in the material.

The first Spirit takes inspiration from the Thai solar Deities and the myth of Helios and the interpretation of the Sun as a generative force and principle of exposure.

The second spirit interwinds Scandinavian solstice rituals  with Sicilian ceramic heads, rural costumes and a marine imaginary that oscillates between celebration and deformation.

The third spirit engages with Japanese animism, the figures of Tanuki and Yokai, filtered through the aesthetic of 1970s editorial psychedelia.

The fourth spirit merges gargoyles and medieval bestiaries with the graphic rigor of Art Deco (A.M. Cassandre) and the performative excess of club culture, from Leigh Bowery to drag cabaret.

The fifth and final spirit explores nocturnal and liminal entities: Japanese sleep spirits, the disturbing imagery of Füssli’s Nightmare, the sphinx as a threshold figure, and the silent presence of Kodama in Princess Mononoke, extending back to the Paleolithic Venus.

Contemporary society has been emptied of spirits, rituals, and cycles in order to be measured, disciplined, and exploited. It’s in this window that Relik operates, creating quirky objects that burn, melt, shine and break, as a response to a culture that learned how to optimise everything.