Gino Sarfatti: the inventor of Italian lighting design
From a small Milan company founded in 1939, Gino Sarfatti designed several hundred lamps and taught the world to see the light source itself as the heart of a design.
10 articles
Designers
Portraits of the people who shaped light.
From the Milan workshop of Gino Sarfatti to the poetic installations of Ingo Maurer and the quiet geometry of Michael Anastassiades: portraits of the designers who turned the lamp into an art form.
Ingo Maurer: the poet of light
He turned a bare bulb into a monument, gave another one feathered wings and hung paper notes around a pendant. Ingo Maurer changed what a lamp could be.
Verner Panton: colour, curves and glowing pop
Verner Panton filled rooms with orange, purple and glossy curves. His Flowerpot, Panthella and shell lamps were pieces of total interiors that still glow today.
Serge Mouille: the silversmith who drew with light
Thin black arms, pointed shell shaped shades and crisp shadows: in 1950s Paris, the silversmith Serge Mouille created some of the most graphic lamps of French modernism.
Gae Aulenti: architecture you can switch on
Gae Aulenti designed lamps the way she designed buildings, as part of a space. Her Pipistrello became an icon, and her Musée d’Orsay turned a station into a museum.
Michael Anastassiades: the quiet geometry of balance
The Cypriot born, London based designer turned spheres, lines and a sense of balance into some of the most recognisable lamps of the century so far.
Alvar Aalto: light shaped by Finnish architecture
For Alvar Aalto a lamp was never an afterthought. From the Golden Bell at the Savoy to the skylights of Viipuri, his lighting was part of the architecture itself.
Jean Prouvé: the constructor’s lamps
Jean Prouvé thought like an engineer and built like a craftsman. His Potence wall lamp, a bare bulb on a long swinging arm, sums up a whole philosophy of honest construction.
Tom Dixon: British design with metal and glamour
Self-taught, restless and fascinated by metal, Tom Dixon went from welding salvaged scrap to building one of Britain’s best known lighting brands, with Mirror Ball and Beat among its icons.
Paavo Tynell: the man who made Finland glow in brass
Paavo Tynell turned sheets of brass into lamps that sparkle with perforated patterns. This is how a tinsmith’s apprentice became Finland’s great lighting designer.
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