Claypaky celebrates its golden anniversary today. Pasquale ‘Paky’ Quadri – a young musician, passionate about photography and optics – founded the company in the province of Bergamo, northern Italy, on 28 August 1976 with an idea that was anything but obvious at the time: light could be much more than illumination.
In an era when stage lighting was primarily descriptive and functional, fixtures were largely static, with little or no connection to music or movement and almost no possibility of creating dynamic visual effects. Colour changes, when used, were generally achieved by manually inserting gel filters. Paky saw a different future: light could become an active creative element, capable of moving, transforming, interacting with music and, above all, generating emotion.
Fifty years later, that intuition has become a success story. From its headquarters in Seriate, Claypaky has built a reputation as one of the leading names in professional entertainment lighting. Its products have illuminated all the most important stages, concerts, theatres, television productions and international events of the past five decades.
Claypaky was initially conceived as a manufacturer of disco lighting, with its first fixture, the CP-LX3, dating back to 1972, four years before the company was officially founded. At a time when clubs were still largely equipped with manually operated fixtures, Claypaky began developing products that made light dynamic, expressive and closely connected to music.
The Astrodisco, launched in 1982, used a single lamp and multiple lenses to create dozens of beams of light simultaneously. A year later, Astroraggi projected more than 100 pulsating beams across European dance floors, transforming the visual experience of clubs.
These early products established a pattern that would recur throughout Claypaky’s history. The company would identify a new creative possibility, develop the technology to make it practical and, in doing so, help create an entirely new category within professional lighting.
That philosophy reached a major milestone in 1988 with the Golden Scan, the first moving mirror fixture, or “scanner,” to incorporate microstepper motors. This breakthrough enabled an unprecedented level of precision and control in movement, helping the Golden Scan become a market leader and an industry benchmark for more than a decade.
The Golden Scan became much more than a successful professional lighting fixture. Its name entered popular culture when British band Klaxons used it as the inspiration for the title of their 2007 hit “Golden Skans”.
Other important milestones followed, including the Miniscan, the world’s first compact scanner, and the Super Scan Zoom, introduced in 1994 as the world’s first fixture to combine CMY colour mixing with a zoom function.
By the end of the 1990s, the market itself was changing. Professional lighting was moving beyond discotheques and increasingly becoming an essential part of concert touring, theatre, television and large-scale events.
The Stage Line, introduced in 1999 as a family of six moving body projectors ranging from 300 to 1,200 watts, became a reference product for major international productions. A few years later, the Stage Profile 1200 became the first professional beam shaper to feature a highly sophisticated, patended framing system capable of producing the distinctive “curtain effect” with a single blade.
The following decade saw Claypaky introduce a series of products that did not simply improve existing technologies but changed expectations of what a moving light could achieve. In 2008, the Alpha Beam 300 established the beam moving light as a new category. Instead of producing a broad cone of illumination, it generated a narrow, solid and sharply focused column of light. Within just a few years, beam fixtures had become a standard element of major stage productions around the world.
The concept reached iconic status with Sharpy, launched in 2010. Weighing approximately 19 kilograms and consuming just 189 watts, it delivered an extraordinary, unprecedented output for a fixture of its size. It quickly became one of the best-selling moving heads in the history of entertainment lighting, earning numerous Innovation Awards from leading international industry organisations and achieving truly global adoption across virtually every sector of the entertainment industry. Its success was also a clear demonstration of Claypaky’s ability to turn technical innovation into a product with a profound impact on the market. The Sharpy was widely imitated but remained the original reference point for the category it had helped define.
Other landmark products followed. The highly innovative, game-changing B-Eye combined wash, beam and effects capabilities in a single LED moving head, while Mythos introduced a new generation of hybrid fixtures. In 2019, Xtylos became the world’s first moving head using an RGB laser source, once again opening a new technological category.
Claypaky subsequently launched a series of sophisticated fixtures specifically designed for theatre, including Sinfonya and Rhapsodya, distinguished by their exceptionally high-quality light output and CRI, and incorporating a wide range of unique, patented technical innovations. In 2024, Claypaky launched the Ultimo family, featuring the Ultimo Hybrid, one of the most versatile fixtures ever introduced to the market, and the Ultimo Sharpy, a highly advanced IP66-rated evolution of the original Sharpy concept.
For more than 20 years, Claypaky has been a key lighting technology partner of the Eurovision Song Contest. Claypaky technology has also played a role in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, World Expos, and Disney on Ice and Holiday on Ice, among others.
Claypaky’s relationship with Cirque du Soleil goes back to the company’s earliest international productions in the 1990s. From its first shows, Claypaky provided the lighting fixtures used to create extraordinary atmospheres and constantly changing visual worlds that have become a defining characteristic of Cirque du Soleil’s productions.
In concert touring, Claypaky fixtures have accompanied some of the biggest names in music, including, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Beyoncé, Shakira, Elton John, Justin Timberlake, Ed Sheeran, Metallica, Rammstein, Coldplay and Bad Bunny.
In 2014, the company became part of the OSRAM Group. The same year also marked the death of founder Pasquale ‘Paky’ Quadri. In 2016, Claypaky acquired ADB Lighting Technologies, strengthening its position in theatre and broadcast lighting and expanding its activities through ADB Stagelight. In March 2023, the company was acquired by ARRI, the Munich based specialist in camera and broadcast technology. The next chapter began in May 2025, when Claypaky became part of EK Lights, a long-standing development partner and a major international player in professional lighting.
The new ownership structure provides a stronger industrial platform and new opportunities for international growth. At the same time, the essential identity of Claypaky remains unchanged. The company continues to be headquartered in Seriate; its product development remains rooted in Italy and the Claypaky brand continues to be at the centre of its activities.
