Gino Sarfatti was in awe of light, but obsessed with the light bulb. Through the designer’s long line of innovations, from the slender aluminum floor lamps of 1956 to the bowl-shaped wall sconces of 1970, this obsession holds sway. Even in his most whimsical designs, like the 1953 Lollipop Chandelier that has a palette worthy of a Calder mobile, each feature defers to the light source. “The most important element is the shape of the bulb itself,” Sarfatti told Jean-François Grunfeld in 1984, in the last interview he gave before his death.
No. 556, 1956, Table Lamp, height 48 cm
Shear Trade
Not many of us are overwhelmed with patriotic feelings when we think about scissors but they have been a highly protected manufactured good for much of America’s history. In the tariff act of 1922, the tax on imported scissors was 45%, which was pretty high for that time. In the 1990s, the tariff on “cheap scissors” was 23.6%, which is super high for our era of low tariffs.
The Free-Trade Bugaboo, 1880s, by Charles Jay Taylor, Courtesy of Georgia State University Library
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