Lighting your way

Italian manufacturers provide many lighting options for home use

With the amount of daylight shrinking each day until the beginning of winter, this is perhaps a good time of year to assess any home lighting needs. The Italian lighting industry is foremost in the world, accounting for about one third of international sales annually.
The Italian industry's leading player in terms of design is likely Artemide, which was established more than 40 years ago. The Milan-based company's early years were marked by now-classic designs by the likes of Gae Aulenti, Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari and Gio Ponti and Artemide continues to pursue innovative work. The company has in recent years enlisted the respected design expertise of Michele de Lucchi and one result was the handsome Castore series of lighting, reminiscent of Mari and Anna Fasolis' Polluce lamp of the 1960s. De Lucchi's design features a white glass diffuser with a light source that fades gracefully into a translucent polycarbonate stem. Decidedly more avant-garde is Artemide's Sui task lamp, a modern polycarbonate design with easy portability. Artemide continues to celebrate its past, however. A recent re-issue is the 1970 Boalum multi-purpose lamp by Livio Castiglioni and Giancarlo Frattini. The light's plastic and resin tubing coils like a snake - without the fear of attack, of course.
One of Artemide's main competitors is Flos, a Bovezzo, Brescia lighting company established in 1962. Flos' current roster of freelance designers reads like a who's who of the design world's brightest stars, including popular figures such as Antonio Citterio, Konstantin Grcic, Piero Lissoni, Jasper Morrison, Philippe Starck and Marcel Wanders. Despite the luminous list, many Flos designs are as much preoccupied with function as they are with style. Morrison's Glo-Ball lamp, for example, is a simple, elegantly proportioned light which has inspired many imitators. The May Day lamp by Grcic features a polypropylene diffuser with a convenient carrying handle. Flos is not afraid to court controversy on occasion, though. The Italian company often collaborates with French design bad-boy Philippe Starck. At last April's Milan furniture fair, Flos and Starck debuted the Gun collection of lamps, a lighting series featuring a gun or rifle design serving as the lamp's stem. If the Gun lamp was intended to attract attention, it worked. The Brescia lighting company also delved into its past this year, releasing new editions of classic designs by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, as well as a re-issue of Tobia Scarpa's acclaimed Fantasma lighting series.
Venice-based Foscarini is another major player in the Italian lighting industry, but this youngish company (it celebrates its 25th anniversary next year) tends to place its focus on fairly whimsical designs. The recent six-sided polycarbonate Bubble lamp by Valerio Bottin fits nicely in the Foscarini catalogue, which includes designs resembling cigars and spaceships. One of their most effective designs, however, is the relatively straight-forward Lumiere table lamp by Rodolfo Dordoni, which combines a glass shade with a cast aluminum tripod base.
Italian manufacturer Luceplan scored a hit in the late 1980s with the Titania suspension lamp by Alberto Meda and Paola Rizzatto. The lamp features a sleek aluminum shell and interchangeable colour filters that allow a variety of looks for the shell without affecting the white light source. Its retail price may induce sticker shock, but Titania has become a modern Italian design classic since its initial release.
Other major Italian lighting companies include Antonangeli, Leucos, Oluce, Pallucco, Slamp and Studio Italia. Energy efficient lighting has become increasingly popular with manufacturers and consumers, so when considering new lighting for the home, consider also options to incandescents such as compact fluorescents (CFLs), halogen lights and light emitting diodes (LEDs).

Publication Date: 2005-10-23
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=5654