Cleo Lamp Kelly

When Kelly Wearstler started her namesake business, in 1995, she worked alone out of her Los Angeles apartment. “Sixteen-hour days, seven days a week,” she recalls. “The studio has truly grown organically over the years.”

​​Wearstler’s work in the early 2000s was classified as the new Hollywood Regency — much to her dismay. It’s easy to understand her reaction. Although the glam quotient of her projects jibed with the style, her aesthetic was far more sophisticated than that of the many wannabe designers who were merely peddling Dorothy Draper and William Haines retreads.

Today, Wearstler presides over a behemoth, many-tentacled enterprise. One part is involved with residential interior design for such high-profile clients as Cameron Diaz, Gwen Stefani and Ben Stiller. There is also a team dedicated to hospitality design, including for projects like the recently opened Proper Hotels’ properties — developed by her husband, Brad Korzen’s Kor Group — in Austin and Santa Monica. Then, there are her ever-expanding product designs in a multitude of categories: In 2019, she added new carpets and runners to her collection with The Rug Company, collaborated with Georg Jensen on a tableware and centerpiece collection and partnered with Ann Sacks on a line of encaustic tiles and with Lee Jofa on a line of fabrics and wallcoverings. Each season sees fresh additions to Wearstler’s lighting lines, as well.

Wearstler is drawn to furniture that is boldly scaled and, often, graphically patterned, mixing such pieces with one-off creations by artist designers like Roland Mellan, Lindsey Adelman, Katie Stout, Misha Kahn, Entler Studios, Susan for Susan and Anton Alvarez.

“For me, it is the power of the line,” says Wearstler. “I think it goes back to my love for graphic design. There is so much strength and beauty in the simple line. Pair this with geometries and artisanal fabrication, beautiful materiality and you have exceptional pieces of furniture. In essence, furniture as sculpture.”

Of course, no matter how distinct in style, both the early and most recent work springs from the same impulse. Wearstler’s signature approach to interiors has been described as marching right up to “over the top” then taking a step back. In that sense, Wearstler is doing what she has always done, albeit in a more confident way, with bigger budgets, a larger proportion of important furnishings and art and more of her own designs. The Hollywood glamour that got her noticed decades ago toed the same elusive line of good taste that her blend of blue-chip pieces, Memphis Group furniture and challenging works by emerging artist-designers does today.

Find Kelly Wearstler furniture on 1stDibs.

Well-crafted antique and vintage table lamps do more than provide light; the right fixture-and-table combination can add a focal point or creative element to any interior.

Proper table lamps have long been used for lighting our most intimate spaces. Perfect for lighting your nightstand or reading nook, table lamps play an integral role in styling an inviting room. In the years before electricity, lamps used oil. Today, a rewired 19th-century vintage lamp can still provide a touch of elegance for a study.

After industrial milestones such as mass production took hold in the Victorian era, various design movements sought to bring craftsmanship and innovation back to this indispensable household item. Lighting designers affiliated with Art Deco, which originated in the glamorous roaring ’20s, sought to celebrate modern life by fusing modern metals with dark woods and dazzling colors in the fixtures of the era. The geometric shapes and gilded details of vintage Art Deco table lamps provide an air of luxury and sophistication that never goes out of style.

After launching in 1934, Anglepoise lamps soon became a favorite among modernist architects and designers, who interpreted the fixture as “a machine for lighting,” just as Le Corbusier had reimagined the house as “a machine for living in.” The popular task light owed to a collaboration between a vehicle-suspension engineer by the name of George Carwardine and a West Midlands springs manufacturer, Herbert Terry & Sons. 

Some mid-century modern table lamps, particularly those created by the likes of Joe Colombo and the legendary lighting artisans at Fontana Arte, bear all the provocative hallmarks associated with Space Age design. Sculptural and versatile, the Louis Poulsen table lamps of that period were revolutionary for their time and still seem innovative today. 

If you are looking for something more contemporary, industrial table lamps are demonstrative of a newly chic style that isn’t afraid to pay homage to the past. They look particularly at home in any rustic loft space amid exposed brick and steel beams.

Before you buy a desk lamp or table lamp for your living room, consider your lighting needs. The Snoopy lamp, designed in 1967, or any other “banker’s lamp” (shorthand for the Emeralite desk lamps patented by H.G. McFaddin and Company), provides light at a downward angle that is perfect for writing, while the Fontana table lamp and the beloved Grasshopper lamp by Greta Magnusson-Grossman each yield a soft and even glow. Some table lamps require lampshades to be bought separately.

Whether it’s a classic antique Tiffany table lamp, a Murano glass table lamp or even a bold avant-garde fixture custom-made by a contemporary design firm, the right table lamp can completely transform a room. Find the right one for you on 1stDibs.