Big Contemporary Floor Lamp By Faina

After experiencing the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, furniture designer and architect Victoria Yakusha sought in her work to preserve, revive and celebrate Ukrainian culture. A deep connection with nature and a sustainable construction approach connects her designs to the Earth and centuries-old traditions. By drawing on techniques and materials native to her home country, Yakusha creates award-winning collections of furniture, lighting and décor with an organic modern design style.

Growing up, Yakusha fostered an affinity for Ukrainian primitivist and folk artists including self-taught painter Maria Prymachenko. She later studied architecture at Prydniprovska State Academy in Ukraine and the National Institutes of Science and Technology in France. In 2006, she opened YAKUSHA, a multidisciplinary studio, and in 2014, she launched her furniture brand, Faina.

Faina uses materials from Ukraine and employs local specialists to craft furnishings, often entirely by hand. The brand developed its own living material, ztista, a moldable dough composed of recycled metal, cellulose, wood chips and clay. Faina also uses a historic craft technique known as valkuvannia, which involves coating a solid surface with a mixture of straw, hay and natural clay. It enables sculptors to form highly textured pieces including chairs, benches and lamps.

Yakusha’s work has been presented around the world, including at the 2018 and 2020 Paris Design Week, 2017 Stockholm Furniture Fair, 2018 and 2020 Milan Design Week and 2015 and 2018 Bologna Design Week. She won recognition from the ELLE DECO International Design Awards in 2019, Art Space Interior Awards in 2020 and the 2020 Arte Laguna Prize for Art Design. In 2021, Yakusha’s Istetyka interior in Kyiv became the first Ukrainian project to win in the Dezeen Awards for the Bars & Restaurants category.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of designs by Victoria Yakusha including seating, tables, decorative objects and more.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

The modern floor lamp is an evolution of torchères — tall floor candelabras that originated in France as a revolutionary development in lighting homes toward the end of the 17th century. Owing to the advent of electricity and the introduction of new materials as a part of lighting design, floor lamps have taken on new forms and configurations over the years. 

In the early 1920s, Art Deco lighting artisans worked with dark woods and modern metals, introducing unique designs that still inspire the look of modern floor lamps developed by contemporary firms such as Luxxu. 

Popular mid-century floor lamps include everything from the enchanting fixtures by the Italian lighting artisans at Stilnovo to the distinctly functional Grasshopper floor lamp created by Scandinavian design pioneer Greta Magnusson-Grossman to the Paracarro floor lamp by the Venetian master glass workers at Mazzega. Among the more celebrated names in mid-century lighting design are Milanese innovators Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, who, along with their eldest brother, Livio, worked for their own firm as architects and designers. While Livio departed the practice in 1952, Achille and Pier Giacomo would go on to design the Arco floor lamp, the Toio floor lamp and more for legendary lighting brands such as FLOS. 

Today’s upscale interiors frequently integrate the otherworldly custom lighting solutions created by a wealth of contemporary firms and designers such as Spain’s Masquespacio, whose Wink floor lamps integrate gold as well as fabric fringes. 

Visual artists and industrial designers have a penchant for floor lamps, possibly because they’re so often a clever marriage of design and the functions of lighting. A good floor lamp can change the mood of any room while adding a touch of elegance to your entire space. Find yours now on 1stDibs.