Header: Courtesy of Castro Lighting
Magma is a collection of lights in solid brass, shaped into irregular, rough-surfaced pieces that remind onlookers of fragments of volcanic rock, with tubes of glass hanging among them. It was made by Castro Lighting, a Portuguese brand founded in 1978 by Modesto Castro in Rio Tinto, near Porto, and presented at Maison&Objet in Paris in January 2026. For the summer, the brand has now shown the collection inside a villa in the Algarve, in a series of images titled “The Matter of Summer”.
The Magma pieces
As the name suggests, the collection was inspired by magma, the molten rock found beneath the Earth’s surface, with every brass piece shaped to look like the texture of volcanic stone. Like the rest of the brand’s pieces, Magma was handcrafted in Portugal, where Castro Lighting’s artisans hammer the brass and assemble the structures by hand.
According to the brand, light passes through the glass tubes and reflects off the brass around them, so the pieces seem to glow in layers. The collection includes the Magma Suspension, the Magma Rectangular Suspension and the Magma Wall Light, the latter coming in four sizes, from 15 to 40 cm tall, which allows it to create unique formations when grouped together across a wall.
The living room
In the living room of the villa, the Magma Suspension can be found hanging from a round brass plate fixed to the ceiling, with the brass fragments and glass tubes dropping on thin cables at different heights.
Among other pieces displayed in the villa are the Safi Table Lamp, which has a body of hammered brass under a dark shade, and the Eclipse Floor Lamp, made of four round brass plates stacked along a stem.
As for the furniture, the Columns Center Table was placed right in the middle of the living room, built from two square slabs of marble and held apart by brass columns. It comes in two sizes, the larger being 80 cm wide and 30 cm high and the smaller 60 cm wide and 40 cm high, while the Columns Side Table boasts the same mix of brass and marble.
The dining room
Over the dining table, the Magma Rectangular Suspension hangs from a long rectangular plate, with dozens of glass tubes, some of them with small pieces of brass inside, and flat brass fragments suspended among them. The table below it is the Eléa Dining Table, with brass details, surrounded by Susan Chairs, which have curved, upholstered seats and polished brass legs.
As a final touch, the Masai Pendant is a slim brass tube decorated with patterns based on the markings of the Masai giraffe, a giraffe from East Africa known for its jagged spots.
The brand’s goal with “The Matter of Summer” was to present the villa as a complete summer home, dressed in brass handcrafted in Portugal. Having proven itself worthy of upscale interiors, Magma can now be applied to private homes, hotels and interior projects all over the world.
Project information
Lighting Design Company: Castro Lighting
Location: Rio Tinto, Portugal
Date: 2026
