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This is quite the pair of lamps! Designed by Pier Giuseppe Ramella for Italian lighting company Arteluce. This pair of lamps is just extraordinary with their elegant fan shaped frosted glass shades which sit atop an enameled conical shaped base of dark gray. They rotate on the base showing either an off-white convex plastic lens on one side or a soft gray lens on the other. They retain their original Flos tag and Atelier International Lighting tag on the bottom of each lamp. Their condition is flawless except for the following: the off-white lens on one of the lamps has yellowed slighting possibly due to an oversized bulb being used; and one of the plastic lens fasteners on that lamp has been repaired as well; and the outer cover of one of the cords is worn but is not hazardous as it is only a secondary cover. This in no way takes away from their usability or beauty. These are a beautifully matched pair of lamps but, we will entertain selling them individually if you so desire. Please contact us for individual pricing.
Italian lighting design company Arteluce was established in 1939 by the young Venetian designer-entrepreneur Gino Sarfatti. Political upheaval at the time forced Sarfatti to abandon his aeronautical engineering degree in Genoa and move with his family to Milan. There, despite a lack of formal design training, Sarfatti embarked on a lighting career. Yet it is arguably because he was wholly self-taught that Sarfatti immersed himself in the full lifecycle of the design process, from conception to production, collaborating with artisans and architects to create stronger, lighter, and cheaper modernist lamps than Italy has seen before. Arteluce quickly established itself as a successful and visionary lighting brand thanks to Sarfatti’s commitment to technical, material, and production research. He designed over 400 lamps in his lifetime (though some sources say it was as many as 700), which are celebrated for their minimalist yet expressive aesthetic and experimental materials. In the 1960s, Arteluce became a creative hub for Italy’s most talented designers, producing designs by major talents, such as Franco Albini, Cini Boeri, Franca Helg, Ico Parisi, and Massimo Vignelli. The lighting installation for the Teatro Regio opera house in Turin—one of Arteluce’s last projects, which comprised hundreds of pendant plexiglas tubes installed under the direction of legendary architect Carlo Mollino in 1972—is considered one of the company’s greatest achievements. In 1973, Sarfatti sold his business to Flos and retired to Lake Como. Many Arteluce creations are still in production today, and several original models are housed permanently in important museums like MoMA in New York.
Arteluce became a division of Flos group in 1974 and Pier Giuseppe Ramella designed for them in 1980’s.
Arteluce lamps are considered a fine classic treasure! This fabulous pair should be yours!
