Claudia Moreira Salles graduated in 1978 at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI) in Rio de Janeiro.
After working at the Design Institute of Rio's Museum of Modern Art, in a furniture project for public schools , she moved to São Paulo to become part of the design team of Escriba, a furniture company. At the same time she started developing more authorial projects relying on craftworks, especially in wood. These first pieces, including the desk Canguru reedited in a new version in 2016 by Espasso, were showed by Fulvio Nanni who during the 1980s represented an independent generation of designers and their production.
Later she met Etel Carmona who had just started her own furniture manufacturing company dedicated to restore traditional woodworking techniques and to whom Claudia starts creating furniture allying the simplicity and rationality of an industrial product with the richness of Brazilian native woods and the skills of the woodworkers.
Claudia values working close to the craftspeople and following every detail of the production. To counteract with wood she started exploring other materials like cast concrete, stone, steel, copper and niobium. She extended her collaboration creating furniture to other brands like Casa 21, Firma Casa, Dpot and Butzke and diversified designing objects and lighting for St. James, specialized in silverware; Bertolucci and Lumini both lighting companies.
Since 2002 she is represented by Espasso with pieces made in Brazil and in the US.
