New Adventures In Lighting


BLOG


AFFORDABLE ITALIAN LIGHTING


Foscarini, Flos, Fontana Arte, not only are they all Italian - but they all tend to cost a few bob too. But don’t be put off! Buying a decent lamp is an investment in your life. Maybe it will provide you with a good useable light for your late-night studying? or maybe it will create the perfect ambience for your evening Ferrero Rocher party? or maybe it will just make you smile when you look at it even when it's not even turned on. But what if you don’t have megabucks to spend on Italian lighting? Well, I don’t either so I’ve made a list of what I feel to be a good buy below. All are Italian & available new for under £170, some less than £100. Remember - We are Independent & Unbiased - the below list is just an opinion. Feel free to add your opinions also.





1) BEST VALUE - ARTEMIDE DALU TABLE LAMP - £86.00



Made from a single piece of moulded thermoplastic, its sweeping concave form is as beautiful as it is practical. This is a reissue of the original 1960s Vico Magistretti design, being both of its time and strikingly Now. You can get it in two standard colourways & a few special ones so I recommend the transparent Orange for ultimate 60s kitch. Why have I chosen this lamp as the best value when it is not the cheapest? because the statement is true. This feels like a lamp that should cost more and the production methods have shone through to create a high-quality item at an affordable price. Great packaging also.





Image Credit: Artemide





2) BEST INNOVATION - ARTEMIDE COME TOGETHER TABLE LAMP - £170.00



The official Blurb on the Artemide website about the lamp is really something, you should check it out later. Personally I Love the Futuristic look of this lamp & Artemide have packed tons of innovation into this one - its a rechargeable / portable lamp which should be good for 16 hours straight which is longer than you should be awake for anyway, and the resulting illuminated effect is pretty impressive with the light collimated up 1st through an optical TIR (Totally Internal Reflector) lens and then a secondary internal reflector which inverts the beam back down giving the lamp its almost surreal glowing properties when switched on but I think it looks just as beautiful at rest - its truly an object of desire. I’m a big fan of things that are not immediately obvious what they are upon first look & this draws you in to want to interact with it to figure it out. The more I learn about this lamp the more I like it and the more I can see its potential. It is the most expensive lamp on the list but also the newest (2018) but it's well worth the cost for such a versatile lamp and one which Artemide have obviously invested so much in.





Image Credit: Artemide





3) MOST STYLISH - FLOS MISS SISSI TABLE LAMP - £85.00



It's designed by Philippe Starck - That's all this review really needed to say.

It's quite a tactile lamp which invites you to touch it - I recommend to be Bold & get the purple version. It features a weighted base to stop you knocking it over but its made from Polycarbonate so you can’t smash it anyway. It has a zigzag ‘seam’ which playfully mimics stitching & I love the way the cable exits the base as if from beneath a flowing dress. When illuminated the lamp provides a luxuriously diffused light with the bulb holder positioned at a just the right hight to reduce visible glare from the bulb. It's very evidently 90s with its strong but playful silhouette The bold outline even has echoes of Terry Farrell's architecture of the same period (my personal opinion). Its a cliche to say, but this is a design classic from one of the most striking design figures of our time.





Image Credit: Flos Archive





4) MOST PRACTICAL - FLOS MAY DAY UTILITY LAMP - £90.00



First impression is its pretty huge at 53cm tall! but it's mega practical as below:

- Long 5-meter cord

- Made from hard-wearing polypropylene

- ’Shade’ acts as both a diffuser and protector

- Handle doubles as a cord wrap

- Features inbuilt suspension hook

- Bold utilitarian colourways

- Rugged push-button switch on handle


The promo for this lamp shows a guy using it to fix a car in a garage getting oil all over it and then another picture is the lamp in a hipsters bedroom. In the words of the designer, the lamp is “not designed for anywhere in specific”. Its definitely got a lot of practical uses and will make you look stylish whilst your fixing your car like the guy in the promo.





Image Credit: Flos / Frank Huelsboemer





5) MOST ICONIC - FLOS LAMPADINA TABLE LAMP - £85.00



Designed by the master himself Achille Castiglioni in 1972 for the opening of Flos’ Turin showroom of the same year, Lampadina literally translates as ’bulb' and is a brilliant example of unexpected form & function, featuring a film wheel like cable tidy and a partially defused bulb to avoid glare, its a design classic which has been featured in the Museum Of Modern Art. It’s astounding that you can buy this iconic lamp for such an affordable price.





Image Credit: Flos / Frank Huelsboemer





6) MOST FUN - FONTANAARTE BLOM TABLE LAMP - £156.00



This is a relatively fresh lamp having been designed for FontanaArte in 2013 by Andreas Engesvik who definitely brings some skandi tones to FontanaArte for this fun lamp. It's a red dot winner & the name doesn’t need a translation for you to know where the inspiration came from. The Petals are adjustable and act to defuse & angle the light to your personal preference and can act as a mechanism to cut down or increase the direct light which would be perfect as a bedside lamp - Bright for when your reading and then you can cut the light away for when your watching Killing Eve on Netflix. I’d definitely smile waking up and seeing this each day. It’s titchy at just 24cm high & comes in around 7 different colours to add a splash of practical fun to your life.





Image Credit: FontanaArte





7) My Favourite - Foscarini Binic table lamp - £134.40



Available in a myriad of colours, I feel this lamp has a strong graphic style which jars with reality in its form but becomes clear when you learn the inspiration comes from the ventilation shafts of old ships. Binic is named after a lighthouse on the coast of Brittany which is where the designer Ionna Vautrin (who also designed the Foscarini Chouchin) is from which adds a personal touch to this lamp. Foscarini specified in the design brief that this was to be a ‘take away’ or ‘gifting’ lamp hence its proportions and price point, Interestingly the original prototype of this lamp was twice its current size but by the end of the design process the lamps new proportions created a whole new & unexpected personality or ‘cuteness’ for the lamp. Like the Artemide Dalu this also has wonderful packaging but this time by the lamps designer who follows through the aura of the lamp with a box you will want to keep. I could have written about his lamp all night I love it.





Image Credit: Foscarini / Kasia Gatkowska





8) ALSO RECOMMENDED - GUZZINI TIFFANY Table Lamp - £118.00



I absolutely adore the new Guzzini light collection (note - Guzzini not iGuzzini) and from it this little table lamp. Guzzini are more well known for kitchenware & their innovations with plastics which they have now transferred over to their new lighting range, so the Guzzini Tiffany lamp here matches the corresponding Guzzini Tiffany tableware range so you could impress your dinner guests with your matching things. It's available in about a million different colours but I prefer the Red which I have chosen to refer to as candy apple red as it looks good enough to eat.





Image Credit: Guzzini





in summary



This is not a comprehensive list & there are so many lamps I didn’t feature. You can buy a whole plethora of nice-looking lamps and they don’t even have to be Italian but there is something special about lamps like the Flos Lampadina, or the Artemide Dalu which your just not going to find elsewhere. These lamps may be ‘Affordable’ but good design never goes out of style and good design will hold its value both in what you spend on it and in desirability, its something to consider when weighing up spending a bit more on something you will love before chucking a generic desklamp in your trolley at IKEA.



All Images Are Used With Permission & I'd Like To Thank Flos, Foscarini, Artemide, FontanaArte, & Guzzini For Kindly Providing Them To Me.



What Do You Think? - Have Your Say Below.


Widget is loading comments...



Say Hi!



2023 New Adventures In Lighting | Site By: InfiniteBloc.com