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Oji is the name of a subway station in Tokyo. In Sicily, ‘Oji’ is pronounced ‘oi’ – in the ancient Sicilian dialect, it means ‘today’. Actually, we should rather discuss about what this word meant, as Sicilian people do not use it anymore.

This is how Giuseppe Pulvirenti, Founder and Art Director, uses to tell the story of Oji: it all starts with the curious correspondence between a modern Japanese word and an ancient term from the Sicilian dialect, a link found by chance back from a trip to the Far East; it continues with the design of projects aspiring to merge different cultures, to an original fusion of ideas, colours, atmospheres and materials, finally ending with the encounter with Carlo Caruso Jr., co-founder, who is bound to the ancient cabinetmaking craft by family tradition, and is yet willing to follow his personal vocation to revolutionize the classical canons.
It could be wrongly perceived as a surreal and contradictory story, at least as paradoxical as the idea of baptising a contemporary design brand with a name recalling a concept of modernity while still being so archaic that it belongs to an old folkloristic heritage.
But Oji has actually got a perfect balance: it founds substance and consistency in its total expressive freedom, in the harmony between structural innovation and handmade-oriented conception.
The Oji collection was born from its creators’ lifestyles: it is the product of the journey of those who remember where they come from but still leave to set themselves free from the clichés on their origins, to experience something new – and, in the end, to bring it back home.