Set of 4 Light Ball table, ceiling and wall lamp by Castiglioni, Flos

Milanese industrial designer-architects Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (1918–2002; 1913-68) created some of the most iconic furniture designs in the world, particularly those that originated in the realm of mid-century modern lighting. 

In the late 1930s, after graduating from the acclaimed Polytechnic University of Milan, Pier Giacomo opened a design studio with his brother Livio and likeminded architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni. Achille, also a graduate of Milan Polytechnic, joined the group after completing his studies in 1944. The era’s architects were encountering difficulty in their attempts to secure building commissions, so the group focused on designing practical everyday objects such as the Model 547, a tabletop radio for Phonola that was encased in Bakelite. 

The Castiglioni brothers produced wildly popular and innovative designs throughout the 20th century. While Livio departed the practice in 1952 to pursue lighting design and sound technology on his own, Pier Giacomo and Achille would continue to collaborate on a wealth of projects in the ensuing years. 

Vintage furniture collectors may be familiar with Livio and Italian designer Gianfranco Frattini’s serpent-like Boalum lamp, while Achille’s Taraxacum hanging lamp — created for FLOS with sprayed plastic polymers originally intended for military use — as well as the Arco, Snoopy and Toio lamps, which were the result of the collaboration between Pier Giacomo and Achille, are milestones in modernist lighting design. 

Also for FLOS, Pier Giacomo and Achille created a series of metal frames that, wrapped in the polymer, became floor lamps (Gatto) or pendant lights (Viscontea and Taraxacum), all released in 1960. The Gatto floor lamp takes its name from the Italian word for “cat” and the inspiration for its aesthetic from lighting that George Nelson developed for legendary American furniture manufacturer Howard Miller during the 1940s. Around the same time, the designer Tobia Scarpa (son of the famed Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and one-half of the widely revered postmodern husband-and-wife design duo Afra and Tobia Scarpa) created a floor lamp called Fantasma (1961) using the polymers technique. FLOS continues to make the Castiglionis’ innovative pieces today.

In addition to their provocative lighting works, Pier Giacomo and Achille also created stereo systems, decorative objects, seating, tables and other items for the likes of Brionvega, Alessi, Zanotta, Kartell and more.

Find vintage Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni floor lamps, table lamps, pendants, seating and other furniture on 1stDibs.

The lighting maker Arteluce was one of the companies at the heart of the creative explosion in postwar Italian design. The firm’s founder and guiding spirit, Gino Sarfatti (1912–85), was an incessant technical and stylistic innovator who almost single-handedly reinvented the chandelier as a modernist lighting form. 

Sarfatti attended the University of Genoa to study aeronautical engineering but was forced to drop out when his father’s company went out of business. His mechanical instincts led him to turn his attention to lighting design — and he founded Arteluce as a small workshop in Milan in 1939. Sarfatti’s father was a Jew, so the family fled to Switzerland in 1943, but after the war — largely thanks to Sarfatti’s insistence on efficiency of design and manufacture — Arteluce quickly established itself as a top firm.

Though Sarfatti continued as chief designer through the 1950s and ’60s, he also enlisted other designers such as Franco Albini and Massimo Vignelli to contribute work. Sarfatti sold Arteluce to FLOS — a rival Italian lighting maker — in 1973 and retired to pursue a more traditional avocation: collecting and dealing rare postage stamps. 

Sarfatti is regarded by many collectors as a pioneer of minimalist design. He pared down his lighting works to their essentials, focusing on practical aspects such as flexibility of use. His most famous light, the 2097 chandelier, is a brilliant example of reductive modernist design, featuring a central cylinder from which branches numerous supporting fixtures extending like spokes on a wheel.

Similarly, Sarfatti's 566 table lamp is a simple canister, able to be raised or lowered on a stem, holding a half-chrome bulb. Despite the marked functionality of his designs, Sarfatti did have a sprightly side: His 534 table lamp, with its cluster of rounded enameled shades, resembles a vase full of flowers, the Sputnik chandelier (model 2003) was inspired by fireworks and the brightly colored plastic disks of the 2072 chandelier look like lollipops. No matter the style, Sarfatti concentrated first and foremost on the character of light created — and any Arteluce lamp is a modernist masterpiece.

Find vintage Arteluce table lamps, chandeliers, floor lamps and other lighting on 1stDibs.