Lightings, a century of evolution and design

In the 1920’s and the 1930’s, lightings design was industrialized, with a small choice of colours and simple and geometrical shapes. Creations were standardized to handle in the same time mass production, but kept also a certain elegance. It was genuinely in this period that architecture and decorative arts became interdependent and many international architects-designers ⁵ , cantors of modern movement, were oriented to a research of pure shapes and functionality.

Architecture adopted functionalism, based on the famous sentence: “form follows function” ⁶, explaining that an item or a building spatiality, shape or aspect might derive from their primary function. These reflexions quickly attained design and in 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus design school, in Weimar, Germany, to create furniture and objects for everyone thanks to a new and more functional and resistant design, inspired by constructivist ⁷ mathematical searches in architecture.

Thus, the work lamp Midgard by Curt Fisher influenced craftsmen of the Bauhaus ironwork workshop to make modern lightings. Moreover, this lamp was used in the Bauhaus furniture in Weimar and also in the Bauhaus Director’s House in Dessau, when occupied by Walter Gropius, surely answering to the will of not decorative but functional models – here with a clamp and a movable arm ⁸. Those wills influenced a large part of international design during decades and many designers took over these principles, also in lightings area.

Some specific objects, as the work lamp for example, were developed and explored all possible materials and techniques. This lamp always kept a certain minimalism, a small colours palette and similar design with characteristic elements such as an adjustable arm and a narrow light field, which permitted to direct the light on a particular point. These recurrent characteristics didn’t avoid innovations; indeed, in 1925, Edouard-Wilfrid Buquet created a new type of adjustable lamp: a counterweight model that was one of the most famous of this period.

However, all international designers didn’t totally embrace the Bauhaus modernity.

The French design of this period kept some elements of the decorative arts tradition with items mixing modernism and taste for richness and ornamentation. Models were refined and use more luxury than industrial materials, like crystal or ceruse oak. Thus, the designer Jules-Emile Leleu created equally as minimalist lamps in glass and chrome steel, such as a floor light with an integrated glass table created circa 1930, as others in mahogany and silvered bronze.

Likewise, Italian design of the 1930’s also trended toward an elite customer. Thus, Gio Ponti, Head of Fontana Arte, wanted to answer to the request of high-quality glass or crystal lightings. He mixed industrial aesthetic and picturesque detail, brightening his lightings by colours or fanciful shapes, at the origin of a full style, easily identifiable. The Bilia lamp perfectly illustrates this extravagance will with its steel conical leg that seemed to magically support the frosted glass spherical lampshade.

This flowering of different styles at the beginning of the 20th century herald the design expansion of the 1950’s.

The World War II had a large impact on 1950’s design. The post-war years marked the use of new materials, new shapes and new colours after the forced austerity of the war. The need for rebuilding pushed designers to redefine borders of modern design, much closer to the consumer. Each country was differently impacted by the two world wars and since the 1950’s we can see that each nation design acquired some distinct specificities.
Thus, American designers have focused on searching of audacious shapes thanks to new industrial techniques, as shown by the lamp Model n°T-5-G by Lester Geis, whose two lampshades could rotate to hide and to reveal light.

In France, the direction taken was different. Indeed, the government created in 1944 the Ministry of Rebuilding and Urbanism that introduced large rebuilding projects to solve the problem of resettlement of a country that suffered from plenty of destructions. By extension, people needed obviously also new furniture. Many French designers got back to modernity concepts set up in the 1930’s to conceive sober and functional items made with efficient production techniques and simple and strong materials. Getting rid of the excess became necessary for a large series production and French designers tried to detach from the passed wealth of the decorative arts and at the same time to move away from the pre-war austere modernism. They created simple shapes and colours mixes, as Serge Mouille did for his series of lightings with black enameled steel lampshades white inside, supported by thin steel arms.

Not far from it, Italian design took flight after war and became the world design leader. Great industrial manufactures called avant-garde designers to create pieces that took the first place on the front of international scene. While other countries were based on rationalisation of production, Italy saw the development of initiatives of experimentation and manufacture of new and original objects. Designers created fanciful, slight, exuberant lamps, with coloured lampshades and shapes influenced by the contemporary sculpture. The lamp Model n°534 by Gino Sarfatti answered to this madness of post-war Italian design with its multicoloured lampshades that can be angled in many positions.

Two more countries came on the front of the international scene of design: first of all Denmark, proposing a modern design, poetical, rigorous and pleasant and with a low price. Thus, the chandelier PH Artichoke created by Poul Henningsen has a very decorative aspect thanks to its round shape constituted by rectangular slats, and warm thanks to its copper colour.

Second Japan: Japanese designers renew their original repertoire by drawing in the occidental design newness, creating a hybrid unique style. Thus, the Akari lamps of Isamu Noguchi had abstract and pure shapes, close to origami art and occidental art ⁹.

Joe Colombo, applique et lampadaire Alogena, 1970,©Photo Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris/Jean Tholance

The aspiration for change and freedom was strong in the 1960’s and was perpetuated in the 1970’s. The austerity of war and post-war was over and the trust in future took over. Designers rejected the modernism of the 1930’s, for it didn’t match anymore with the request of a larger number of consumers that wanted a change and a larger variety of objects. Moreover, the sixties generation wanted their own identity, far from their parents’ generation, that knew the war. The mass consumerism appeared at this period and designers competed in creativity in order to reach the young generation; the design was no more at the service of functionalism but of aesthetical.
The 1960’s design wanted to be inventive, leaving place to roundness and colour: the Pop Art ¹¹ period began! The Danish designer, Verner Panton, was one of the greatest representatives of this design and created lightings with curved shapes and vivid colours as the Topan chandelier or the Kugel-Lampe chandeliers. His Pop sensibility let him create a new quality of life thanks to interior design by freeing imagination and by creating a playful design.

The other distinctive element of the 1960’s concerns materials: new materials appeared and let designers be free from the physical constraints of creation. Plastic was raised as a main element and its use was democratized also in lightings manufacture. Researches about thermoplastic and optic properties of this material were done to create, for example, the table lamp Model n°281 Acrilica in moulded C shaped acrylic by the Italian Joe Colombo.

Moreover, Italian designers also succeeded in “cleaning” plastic from its cheap and unattractive product reputation to create captivating pieces. Thus, the shape-borrowing was frequent, however, they were revisited, recreated, resized to serve to another function and called into question our original perception, as the Pillola lamps of Cesare Casati and Emanuele Ponzio, which picked up the shape of bicolored expanded pills.

The 1970’s extended the reflexions started in the 1960’s and were marked by the diversity of postmodern condition ¹¹ and creation and also the spotlight of the singular identity of each designer, making difficult an exhaustive presentation of all researches and experimentations of this period. The maddest creations took place in this new living art that mixed provocation and claim of cultural and social freedom where colours, shapes, materials, arts mixes continued their experimentations.
Thus, lightings can tend, for example, to the high-tech area, with futurist visions as the Joe Colombo’s one, who imagined entirely modular furniture as the Alogena lamp in three versions: lamp, floor lamp or chandelier.

Italian designers didn’t hesitate, in many cases, to move towards shapes and colours excesses. Thus, Ettore Sottsass, founder member of Studio Alchimia ¹², tended towards freedom of expression with ironic and quirky lightings. In the same vein, Michele de Lucchi took fun of the functional design by using distortion to go away from the original function of the item. He wanted more to create a strong image of a product than to answer to lighting problem: the Sinerpica lamp, with its vivid colours and shapes reminding a creeper, went far from functionality.

At the end of the 20th century, the diversity of styles, designers and new researches about modernity, ecology and new technologies created infinite possibilities in design that will be explored in the following decades.

The 1980’s extended researches started in the 1970’s about postmodern condition. There were no longer hegemonic trend but a plurality of personal initiatives and a shift gradually operated: designers themselves were put on the front scene without any movement. Only Italian designers seemed to stand out as a cell with the Memphis Group ¹³, whose will was to create a coloured, humoristic design, with original and unstructured shapes. The Super lamp by Martine Bedin was a funny and polychrome model that invited the user to an interaction with the creation thanks to functional wheels.
In a general way, many designers didn’t hesitate to take their inspiration from the past to create a “neo-decorative” design. Philippe Starck, for example, renewed the tradition of French decorative arts according to a personal modern historicist approach: its Haa lamp reminded the candlesticks from… the 18th century!

In his own way, Borek Sipek turned to a “neo-baroque” style giving a great importance to craft work: the exuberant and glint Luigi chandeliers were composed with stylized floral shapes reminding Art Deco chandeliers or the creations of 17th century Murano glass.

The idea of going back to tradition concerned principally materials, such as earthenware, bronze or wood and the creation of limited series or unique pieces had probably a similar purpose. Indeed, designers free from industrial constraints used materials that satisfied luxury expectations of some elite customers. Thus, the Maison Charles ¹⁴ lamps, as the model Water leaf created by Chrystiane Charles, all in bronze and brass from the base to the lampshade, with its several possible patinas, perfectly matched with these criteria and adorned the most beautiful and luxurious French houses.

Polysemy of styles and trends, started during the 1980’s, didn’t decrease in the following decades, on the contrary, the design was everywhere: appliances, food, alcohol, electronic, car, furniture… The purpose was to seduce more consumers, to improve the ergonomics of products and to boost sales that slowed after the “orgy ” ¹⁵ of the 1980’s.

The 2000’s were characterized by a profusion of styles and trends, a sort of new eclecticism after the years of the modernism hegemony of the Mid Century design. Initiatives were varied, and oscillate between two tendencies: a hyper democratisation of design, or imitation design, accessible to the largest number of people with a low price in leading stores, and a hyper valorisation of some creations or designers, whose ratings explodes!
IKEA company is the perfect example of this popularisation of design with prices as to undercut all competition (some twenty euro) as for example the chandelier Brunsta/Hemma available in two sizes, easily constructed and with a geometrical contemporary design.

On the contrary, some designers, as Matali Crasset, created lightings for big design brands, as Roger Pradier, less accessible for the general public. Thus, his collection of exterior lightings called La Hutte, gave a large choice of colours and three versions of this lamp but with a higher price (few hundred euro according to the model).

Initiatives focused on new technologies appeared, as the biomorphic design, as purely decorative: items seemed to live, in a dream world, thanks to soft and poetic shapes. Thus, Ayala Serfaty lightings were inspired by natural shapes as medusas, shells and flowers, exploiting new technical possibilities, such as the use of polymer or a weave of glass filaments. And again, the Aerial Light E23 lamp by the designer Ron Arad was inspired by cars’ antennas and might be rotated and remotely controlled.

For some years, some designers totally associated their creations to new technologies, such as the 3D print. For example, a lamp invented and manufactured by the Canadian industrialist Samuel Bernier was inspired by an ancient shape, the Eiffel Tower, but used modern technology for production.

In a similar way, the American artist and designer Bathsheba Grossman also created a series of lamps with complex shapes by using the computer-assisted conception, the three dimensions modeling and also the technology of print on steel.

All these new technological advances let designers postpone limits of creativity thanks to infinite possibilities to create new shapes.

In this cohort of styles that characterized the 1970’s design, it yet existed a point that gathered many artists and designers: the awareness of the necessity of recycling and, on a larger scale, the protection of the environment. It first began in reaction to the massive use of plastic in the 1960’s and then the petrol crisis in 1973. Several researches on ostentatious consumption patterns were taken to create a link between design and environment. Researches were initially oriented to the use of recycled materials, then they were enlarged to all the characteristics of each object.

Thus, appeared the low design in the 1990’s, that was characterized by restraint and purity of shapes and colors also using fun shapes far from their original use. Thus, the company Droog Design created the Milkbottle chandelier composed by reworked glass milk bottles.

Moreover, in this same way, creations in limited series or on unique piece were multiplied in reaction to an unbridled consumption pattern of the past decades. Thus, Ingo Maurer picked up an aluminum tin can of the Campbell’s to create the Canned Light chandelier or wall bracket.

The endpoint of these researches is probably the eco-design, very committed. Its purpose is to create items respecting the environment, sustainable development and using sustainable or recycled materials such as cardboard, bamboo and steel. Indeed, the Kikidesign designer realized lightings using recycled materials, as the Miss Luza Bomba lamp created thanks to an ancient melt pump. This is apparently one of the strongest tendencies of the 2000’s that aren’t ready to weaken now, when concerns about nature and our future are increasing.

There is no more hegemonic rules and the variety of models available and of price ranges confirm the ambiguity of design: between everyday essential accessible for all and luxury object of desire, today lamps, but also furniture and decorative arts at whole show significant variations.