Why light up
Illumination can be considered as one of the distinctive signs of man’s evolution in comparison with other living beings. As a matter of fact, since forever, man has searched for a channel through light to feel better and therefore to know deeper.
Through the fire of the torches, the flame of the oil lamps and candles, the brightness of lamps until the coloured emissions of led, man enlightens the environments to feel better. But illumination is not only an activity of pure practicality, man always discovers and decorates through light.
Therefore, a light source becomes in the history of furniture, antiques and design, a pretext to make the environment welcoming, to create a sensation of wellbeing but also to decor with an object of quality.
In this way, amazing candleholders, chandeliers, appliques are born which make the history of antiques. Those who modelled and chiselled the bronzes, who blew glasses and grinded crystals pending from the ceiling, who engraved and inlaid the torches are the ancestors of the modern light designers.
Illumination in Italy
Italy is and has always been homeland of artists of great fame and today, differently from the past, we can give a name to the “creators of light”: Gio Ponti, Carlo Scarpa, Pietro Chiesa, Max Ingrand, the Castiglioni brothers, Angelo Lelii, and then again Vico Magistretti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Gino Sarfatti, Gae Aulenti, Meda and Rizzato, Sergio Mazza and other celebre ones.
But let’s give a name to these “light sources”, they are called: Arco floor lamps, the 024 chandeliers, the Pipistrello, Tizio, Taccia, Atollo and Bulb table lamps, the Titania chandelier, to cite some of the most famous ones.
Concluding, let’s give a name to the entrepreneur forces which with foresight have encouraged the creation of the most innovative ideas: Venini, Seguso, Barovier and Toso, Fontana Arte, Stilnovo, Arredoluce, Luceplan, Artemide, Flos, Martinelli Luce, Oluce, Arteluce.
Man, illuminating to know, also found beauty.
