Founded in 2007 by Draga Obradovic and Aurel K. Basedow in the town of Como, Italy, Draga & Aurel is a multi-disciplinary design studio that works along the spectrum of furniture, textile and interior design. Draga Obradovic began her career in the fashion industry, first working in London and Milan as a textile designer before eventually settling in Como, Italy. Aurel K. Basedow graduated from Milan’s Accademia di Belle Arti with a degree in Fine Arts, having previously trained as a carpenter and woodworker. They began as pioneers of upcycling in design, reinventing vintage furniture and objects in their own style. Their debut at Milan Design Week in 2009 has subsequently led to partnerships with companies including Baxter, Visionnaire, Poltrona Frau, and Giorgetti.

Building upon their skills as upcyclers, the duo began their Heritage Collection, exploring the relationship between memory and transformation, revisiting traditional craftsmanship through a contemporary lens. The collection consists of bespoke vintage design pieces, entirely restored and restyled by hand in the Como atelier.

Rooted in Draga & Aurel’s long-standing passion for second-hand furniture, each piece is selected for its potential and reimagined through a process of careful study and intervention. Surfaces become fields of experimentation: wood, metal, and upholstery are reworked through layered techniques such as painting, resin and screen printing. 

In 2019, the design duo stunned audiences at the 2019 Milan Design Week with the first exhibition of their now renowned capsule collection Transparency Matters. Further pursuing the resin work honed while working on the Heritage Collection, Transparency Matters explores the power of transparent and colored resins to illuminate, delight, transform and distort. Throughout this collection, Draga & Aurel showcase their mastery over the art of resin, achieving high strength, jewel-toned, crystal-clear furniture, lighting, and accessories. Always relating to light and color phenomena, the duo’s, appropriately named the Flare collection — exclusive to Todd Merrill Studio — showcases their continued exploration of what transparency can mean in art and design.

Inspired by Minimalism’s simplified volumes, retro-futuristic experimentation of Space Age design and the eye-bending patterns of Optical Art, Draga & Aurel have ingeniously amalgamated these influences. Each piece in this collection is meticulously handcrafted in resin at their Como atelier, a material that continues to capture their fascination. Working with colored resin, bronze, and brass, the duo has designed unparalleled seating, tables, and lighting that span both indoor and outdoor.

Crisalide, an entirely new body of light sculptures by Draga & Aurel marks a striking evolution in the duo’s material and conceptual practice. Presented for the first time at Design Miami, the series includes a monumental hanging pendant and a pair of sculptural sconces, each one meticulously hand-crafted in collaboration with a renowned glassblowing studio in Venice, Italy.

In Crisalide, Draga & Aurel explore light not merely as illumination, but as a transformative force. Overlapping chromatic layers of hand-blown glass form iridescent, ovoid bodies—shells of color that appear to hover between translucency and saturation. A fluid, precision-engineered LED line activates the works from within, tracing luminous gestures that shift and evolve as the viewer moves. The result is a poetic interplay of color, shadow, and radiance: a suspended moment between potential and manifestation.

The series extends the duo’s long-standing interest in transparency, material experimentation, and the dialogue between craft and innovation into a new medium with remarkable clarity and ambition. While rooted in Italian artisan traditions, Crisalide pushes the boundaries of glass through contemporary processes—achieving a level of technical mastery and refinement that feels at once futuristic and deeply tactile.

Draga & Aurel have been named to AD Italia’s AD100 list of the world’s most influential design names three years running (2024 to 2026). Their Parka sofa for Poltrona Frau and Tratto lamp for Gallotti & Radice won Archiproducts Design Awards in 2024 and 2025, and their Flare collection for Todd Merrill Studio won a 2025 German Design Award. They have shown three times at Design Miami, made their Dubai debut at Downtown Design in 2025, and exhibited at Galleria Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week each year since 2024. In 2025 they also had a solo exhibition, Matters of Memories, in Knokke, Belgium, and in 2026 they presented new glass work with Salviati at Salone Raritas.

Extended sizing on select works available exclusively through Todd Merrill Studio on a commission basis.