Are you looking for a table lamp? If so, this is a great chance to decorate your house in style. Whether in need of suffused, warm lighting for your chilled evenings on the sofa, or rather a sharper light to lead you through the night in front of some computer, fine design can help you radically shake up interiors without sacrificing functionality. According to a recent article featured in The New York Times, table lamps can really make a difference.
Table lamps are storytellers, as enchanting as a sculpture or artwork whatsoever, to the point that they instantly provoke a “wow!” reaction. When it comes to product design, durability is the greatest challenge of all: indeed, a few of the following must-haves are thirty, if not forty years old, thus proving how to successfully survive the test of time. Never out of production for a single day, such lamps have been regularly freshen up with the use of new vibrant colours and innovative materials. Please join us in our journey through yesterday, today, and tomorrow’s lamps to find your real design soulmate.
Let’s kick off from an eternal evergreen of the likes of Atollo by Oluce, among Vito Magistretti’s most celebrated works. Tracing back to 1977, the lamp is awarded the Compasso d’Oro ADI two years later. What is its secret of perfection? The artful balance between three geometric shapes. A charmingly essential accessory, it managed to enter infinite museum collections and people’s houses, acting as key plater in numerous tales.
Let’s move on to another icon, which is a great fit for your late night at work in the office or home studio: Tolomeo by Artemide. A best-seller realised by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina in 1986, it snatched the Compasso d’Oro Award in 1989. The lamp has just proved its immortality with a brand new reedition in smaller size with golden finish.
We land in the living now, where a legendary lamp is set to bring a slice of Louis XIV’s sumptuous France right in your house. Born from the creative collaboration of Flos and Baccarat with Philippe Stark, Bonjour Versailles blends the French designer’s contemporary taste and the Sun King’s old-fashioned design estro.
Need an original, fun item to cheerfully light bright your space? If that’s the case, Ingo Maurer is the brand/designer to keep an eye out for. Take Monument for a Bulb, for instance: a plain light bulb being wrapped in an almost hieratic charming aura. At least, to the eyes of those tiny creatures down there.
If you would rather be at work with timeless classics all around, Type 75 by Anglepoise is definitely your cup of tea. Shown here in its irresistible, third reedition by Paul Smith, who remodelled the lamp’s chromatic palette as a playful homage to work of Piet Mondrian.
Let’s end with a bang, as Ingo Maurer strikes again with an evergreen of modern lighting: Lucellino (photo above) results from a simple yet genius intuition, that of making a light bulb fly off. With hand-processed genuine goose-down.
Opening Photo: WHEN FINE DESIGN IS INVOLVED, TABLE LAMPS TURN BOTH INTO FUNCTIONAL AND ORNAMENTAL ACCESSORY, AS SHOWN BY PAUL SMITH’S SPECIAL REEDITION OF TYPE 75 BY ANGLEPOISE. AN HYMN TO THE TIMELESS ART OF PIET MONDRIAN. PH: JAKE CURTIS
