THE JOURNAL
From left: the Piani by Messrs Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, 2011. The Anglepoise 1227 by Mr George Carwardine, 1934. The AJ by Mr Arne Jacobsen, 1960
The desk lamp – task light, if you prefer – is one of design’s favourite problems. It has also obsessed engineers who should have been busy with other more important things and driven them to decades of distraction; sketching diagrams, stretching springs, balancing and counterbalancing and generally tooling around in workshops.
The British engineer Mr George Carwardine came up with the now iconic Anglepoise in the 1930s. It was a game-changer. Now you could alter a light’s height, direction and position with a touch rather than through a tiresome process of unclamping, twisting, turning and re-clamping. It has been endlessly imitated, generating a whole new typology.
Mr Richard Sapper’s Tizio is a sort of masterpiece, a study in balance and beautifully realised functionality. And though it was designed in the early 1970s, it gained totemic momentum in the 1980s and became the alter-piece in the matte-black dream home. Other designers have placed formal elegance before flexibility and functionality, putting together sometimes stark, sometimes delicate compositions of shape, material and light.
Much more attention is now being paid to quality of light – computer screens present different lighting challenges to ink on paper, and more of us are glued to them at home rather than in offices with proper desks and lighting. Energy efficiency is the other big consideration. The major Italian lighting brands such as Flos and Artemide, and the A-list designers they employ, are working with LEDs to produce lamps that give off a kinder, gentler light that are also kinder and gentler to the planet. Here are 10 lamps that would look quite at home on any desk – and cast the WFH reality in a whole new light.
01. The Anglepoise 1227
The Anglepoise 1227 by Mr George Carwardine, 1934. Photograph courtesy of Anglepoise
Launched in 1934, Mr George Carwardine’s Anglepoise 1227 lamp is a genuine British design icon, a triumph of elegant engineering and up-front functionality. Mr Carwardine was a car designer who realised the springs he was developing for suspension systems might be the makings of a revolutionary new lamp. He was right. The Anglepoise 1227, a domestic version of an earlier industrial model, used three springs to hold its arms in place in various positions without the need for clamps while its Art Deco tiered base added dramatic support. The design has been updated various times and Sir Kenneth Grange’s Type 75, launched in 2004, is a minimalist masterwork in its own right.
02. The AJ
The AJ by Mr Arne Jacobsen, 1960. Photograph courtesy of Louis Poulsen
The “AJ” stands for Scandinavian design legend Mr Arne Jacobsen, who designed this lamp (as well as the now ubiquitous Swan and Egg chairs) for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in 1957. Mr Jacobsen was a master of strong, simple shapes with striking profiles and the AJ, with its moveable, slightly sinister hood, is instantly recognisable. The cutout in the cast-iron base was originally designed to hold an ashtray but welcomes other uses. The lamp is now available in a range of colours.
03. The Bestlite BL1
The Bestlite BL1 by Mr Robert Dudley Best, 1930. Photograph courtesy of Gubi
Another great British design, though with a strong Bauhaus influence, the Bestlite was the work of British designer Mr Robert Dudley Best, who studied in Paris and Düsseldorf. It has been produced by the family firm in Birmingham since 1930 (at that time, it was the world’s largest lighting factory). Though still made in Birmingham, the manufacturing rights were taken over by Danish design company Gubi in 2004, which upped the quality and gave the design a new lease of life. Gubi also produces another classic of Bauhaus-influenced modernism, Ms Greta Magnusson Grossman’s Cobra lamp.
04. The Tizio
The Tizio by Mr Richard Sapper, 1972. Photograph courtesy of Artemide
Designed by German Mr Richard Sapper in 1972, the Tizio is as radical an innovation and as elegant a design solution as the Anglepoise. Two delicately counterbalanced arms allow for the most graceful of movements while the parallel arms conduct electricity, keeping the design free of trailing wires. The use of a halogen bulb was also a novelty at the time (one downside of this innovation, though, was that the bulb got very hot, so a thin wire handle was added to the head in the 1990s). Though designed in the 1970s, the Tizio was way ahead of its time and really found commercial and critical favour – and became hugely influential – in the 1980s.
05. The Signal
The Signal by Mr Jean-Louis Domecq, 1953. Photograph courtesy of Jielde
If the Anglepoise is the iconic British desk lamp, the French favour the similar, and similarly flexible, Signal, produced in Lyon since 1953. Like the Anglepoise, the Signal was the work of an inventive engineer rather than a designer. Mr Jean-Louis Domecq spent a decade developing the design before establishing a company, Jieldé, to produce it. Made in a number of colours in enamelled steel, the Signal is a long-lasting piece of industrial funk.
06. The Snoopy
The Snoopy by Messrs Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, 1967. Photograph courtesy of Flos
Despite the jokey moniker, the Snoopy is a cast-iron – or rather, white marble and enamelled aluminium – classic of 20th-century design. Launched in 1967, it was the work of the legendary Castiglioni brothers, Messrs Achille and Pier Giacomo. The appeal of the lamp lies in its marvellous match of material, colour and form and an underlying tension in the design. Snoopy looks as if it should topple backwards, the elegant marble base not up to supporting the reflector, but a heavy glass disc acts as a counterweight, keeping the lamp magically upright.
07. The Binic
The Binic by Ms Ionna Vautrin, 2010. Photograph courtesy of Foscarini
Named after a lighthouse on the coast of Brittany, the Binic has a pleasantly briny air about it, recalling the brightly coloured cowl vents on boats (though from other angles it looks also looks oddly like the permanently imperilled Kenny from South Park). The work of the Breton designer Ms Ionna Vautrin, this playful, and at just 8in tall, dinky little lamp has an aluminium base and a polycarbonate head and comes in a range of colours.
08. The Chipperfield W102
The Chipperfield W102 by Sir David Chipperfield, 2010. Photograph courtesy of Wastberg
Named after its designer, British architect Sir David Chipperfield, this lamp is a minimalist’s delight: a single, joint-free line drawn in brass connecting two simple discs. And while the Chipperfield has an air of rugged rigidity, ball bearings in the base actually make for smooth running rotation. A rubber base means the lamp is more surface-friendly than it might first appear while the rotatable head houses dimmable LED bulbs.
09. The Piani
The Piani by Messrs Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, 2011. Photograph courtesy of Flos
Designed by the French fraternal design duo, Messrs Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, the Piani is all about the tray at the base of the lamp, which the pair sees as a sort of spot-lit stage for small objects. Masters of material and minimal forms, the duo’s Piani is a high-gloss but clean-lined instant classic and comes in plastic and oak, and a range of colours.
10. The Kelvin
The Kelvin by Mr Antonio Citterio, 2009. Photograph courtesy of Flos
The Kelvin is Mr Antonio Citterio’s hi-tech, energy-efficient and impossibly elegant take on the post-Anglepoise typology. The load-compensating spring is housed inside the lamp’s aluminium arms while 30 LEDs are combined to produce a soft, diffused light. A “green mode” sensor can also be activated by simply swiping your hand across the lamp head. The Kelvin will then adjust its output to match the room’s ambient light, saving on energy use.