Original L4 Ceramic Table Lamp by Daniel Orozco
Located in Geneve, CH
Original L4 ceramic table lamp by Daniel Orozco Material: Ceramic. Dimensions: D 30 x H 50 cm
2010s Mexican Post-Modern Table Lamps
Ceramic
Original L4 Ceramic Table Lamp by Daniel Orozco
Located in Geneve, CH
Original L4 ceramic table lamp by Daniel Orozco Material: Ceramic. Dimensions: D 30 x H 50 cm
Ceramic
Small Natural Jabin Wood Floor Lamp with Palm Screen by Daniel Orozco
Located in Geneve, CH
Small natural jabin wood floor lamp with palm screen by Daniel Orozco Material: Jabin wood
Wood
Picasso Marble Cone Side Table
By Kiwano Concept
Located in Eindhoven, NB
Introduce monumental elegance and a grounded detail to your interior with the stunning Picasso marble CONE side table. The sculptural geometric shape of this contemporary design piec...
Marble
$2,500 / item
H 29 in Dm 19 in
Organic Modern Small Table Lamp Natural Wood Handmade Ivory Fluted Shade
By Isabel Moncada
Located in San Antonio, TX
PATA DE ELEFANTE SMALL table lamp was designed for the Atomic collection by Mexican artist Isabel Moncada. Named Pata de Elefante –Elephant's Foot– for the prominent shape at its ba...
Wood, Fabric, Linen, Fiberglass
$78,400 / set
H 36.62 in W 40.95 in D 26.97 in
Pair of Brasiliana Armchairs by Jorge Zalszupin, 1965, Brazilian Midcentury
By Jorge Zalszupin
Located in New York, NY
The iconic Brasiliana is a series composed of a sofa and armchair designed by Jorge Zalszupin (1922-2020) in 1965 and produced by his company, L'atelier. These rare pieces have molde...
Rosewood, Fabric
$2,838 / item
H 24 in W 24 in D 24 in
Modern Fabric Pendant Light by Studio Mirei, Nebula 60, from Costantini
Located in New York, NY
The Nebula collection is drawn out of the interstellar clouds of dust and gas in space - regions where stars begin to form. Made of a woven natural fiber from the banana tree, which ...
Natural Fiber
LU Swing Sconce
By Lumfardo Luminaires
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Beautiful brass LU swing sconce made by Lumfardo Luminaires in patinated brass. Wired with an E26 medium based socket. Light bulb provided as well as all mounting hardware. Priced in...
Brass
'Opposée' Table Lamp - Satin Brown with Cream Wool Shade
By Hannah Simpson Studio
Located in London, GB
Dark Brown base with a satin finish paired with a Cream wool lampshade Bulb NOT included Recommended bulb fitting: E27/26 Recommended bulb type: Mini Globe LED The estimated proce...
Ceramic, Wool, Alpaca, Silk
LUroy Sconce
By Lumfardo Luminaires
Located in Los Angeles, CA
The elegant LUroy Sconce by Lumfardo Luminaires is a French inspired wall sconce in brass with fabric shade. The brass in finished in an unlacquered lightly patinated brass. This sco...
Brass
LUte Sconce
By Lumfardo Luminaires
Located in Los Angeles, CA
The stunning LUte sconce by Lumfardo Luminaires is an up and down fixed cylindrical wall sconce in unlacquered patinated brass or unlacquered gold finish. An all brass fixture, with ...
Gold, Brass
$6,620Sale Price / item|25% Off
H 30.32 in W 66.93 in D 19.3 in
Modern Chiado Console Table, Leather Oak Root, Handmade Portugal by Greenapple
By Greenapple
Located in Lisboa, PT
Modern Chiado Console Table, Contemporary Collection, Handcrafted in Portugal - Europe by Greenapple. The Chiado console table draws inspiration from Lisbon’s historic quarter, capt...
Brass
Mae Solid Wood Nightstand and End Table by Crump and Kwash
By Crump and Kwash
Located in Baltimore City, MD
Mae nightstand by Crump and Kwash Solid wood case / hand turned legs / hand rubbed oil finish / solid brass or bronzed pulls / dovetailed solid wood drawer boxes / premium, full e...
Brass
Vivace Side Table by Laura Gonzalez
By laura gonzalez
Located in Paris, FR
Lacquered wooden side table decorated with enameled, hand-painted ceramic leaves hand-crafted by the French artist Véronique Rivemale with a tabletop made of polished, forest green M...
Marble, Enamel
$1,952Sale Price / item|20% Off
H 16.54 in W 18.51 in D 17.72 in
Dwayne Johnson • Sculptural Petrified Wood Side Table by Odditi
By Odditi
Located in CAROOL, NSW, AU
Born from our lifelong obsession with stacking rocks, this totem-like side table features hand-sculpted, organic shaped petrified wood forms, adorned with a striking raw Petrified wo...
Steel
Bertu Modern Credenza, Iris Black Modern Credenza, Oak
By Bertu Furniture
Located in Oak Harbor, OH
Bertu Modern Credenza, Iris Black Modern Credenza, Oak. This Iris Modern Credenza in Black is made in the heart of Ohio with locally sourced wood. Each credenza is handmade with s...
Oak
Audrey Table Lamp by Cuit Studio
Located in Geneve, CH
Audrey Table Lamp by Cuit Studio One of a Kind. Dimensions: Ø 40 x H 50 cm. Materials: Stoneware white crackled matt with linnen lampshade. Due to the handmade process of this item,...
Stoneware, Linen
Fantastic Italian Chandelier Ceiling Light, Murano 1980
Located in Budapest, HU
Palmette ceiling lights: Made by 163 Murano trasparent glasses in a gold metal frame. Murano blown glass in a traditional way. Structure in gold colored metal. Period: 1980's Dimensi...
Murano Glass
Lazo Lamp
By Melissa Aldrete, Caterina Moretti
Located in Zapopan, Jalisco
Nuanced craftsmanship shapes the pieces of the Lazo collection. A traditional Japanese wood burning technique emphasizes the grain of the tables’ wood and soft spun fibers give the l...
Terracotta, Linen
Postmodern design was a short-lived movement that manifested itself chiefly in Italy and the United States in the early 1980s. The characteristics of vintage postmodern furniture and other postmodern objects and decor for the home included loud-patterned, usually plastic surfaces; strange proportions, vibrant colors and weird angles; and a vague-at-best relationship between form and function.
ORIGINS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN
POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW
VINTAGE POSTMODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS
Critics derided postmodern design as a grandstanding bid for attention and nothing of consequence. Decades later, the fact that postmodernism still has the power to provoke thoughts, along with other reactions, proves they were not entirely correct.
Postmodern design began as an architectural critique. Starting in the 1960s, a small cadre of mainly American architects began to argue that modernism, once high-minded and even noble in its goals, had become stale, stagnant and blandly corporate. Later, in Milan, a cohort of creators led by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini — a onetime mentor to Sottsass and a key figure in the Italian Radical movement — brought the discussion to bear on design.
Sottsass, an industrial designer, philosopher and provocateur, gathered a core group of young designers into a collective in 1980 they called Memphis. Members of the Memphis Group, which would come to include Martine Bedin, Michael Graves, Marco Zanini, Shiro Kuramata, Michele de Lucchi and Matteo Thun, saw design as a means of communication, and they wanted it to shout. That it did: The first Memphis collection appeared in 1981 in Milan and broke all the modernist taboos, embracing irony, kitsch, wild ornamentation and bad taste.
Memphis works remain icons of postmodernism: the Sottsass Casablanca bookcase, with its leopard-print plastic veneer; de Lucchi’s First chair, which has been described as having the look of an electronics component; Martine Bedin’s Super lamp: a pull-toy puppy on a power-cord leash. Even though it preceded the Memphis Group’s formal launch, Sottsass’s iconic Ultrafragola mirror — in its conspicuously curved plastic shell with radical pops of pink neon — proves striking in any space and embodies many of the collective’s postmodern ideals.
After the initial Memphis show caused an uproar, the postmodern movement within furniture and interior design quickly took off in America. (Memphis fell out of fashion when the Reagan era gave way to cool 1990’s minimalism.) The architect Robert Venturi had by then already begun a series of plywood chairs for Knoll Inc., with beefy, exaggerated silhouettes of traditional styles such as Queen Anne and Chippendale. In 1982, the new firm Swid Powell enlisted a group of top American architects, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Stanley Tigerman and Venturi to create postmodern tableware in silver, ceramic and glass.
On 1stDibs, the vintage postmodern furniture collection includes chairs, coffee tables, sofas, decorative objects, table lamps and more.
A wide range of antique and vintage lighting can be found on 1stDibs — shop Tiffany Studios table lamps, modern chandeliers, understated wall pendants and other decorative lighting and fixtures now.
While we’re indebted to thinkers like Thomas Edison for critically important advancements in lighting and electricity, we’re still finding new ways to customize illumination to fit our personal spaces all these years later.
Today, lighting designers like the self-taught Bec Brittain have used the flexible structure of LEDs to craft glamorous solutions by working with what is typically considered a harsh lighting source. By integrating glass and mirrors, reflection can be used to soften the glow from LEDs and warmly welcome light into any space.
Although contemporary innovators continue to impress, some of the classics can’t be beat.
Just as gazing at the stars allows you to glimpse the universe’s past, vintage chandeliers like those designed by Gino Sarfatti and J. & L. Lobmeyr, for example, put on a similarly stunning show, each with a rich story to tell.
As dazzling as it is, the Arco lamp, on the other hand, prioritizes functionality — it’s wholly mobile, no drilling required. Designed in 1962 by architect-product designers Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, the piece takes the traditional form of a streetlamp and creates an elegant, arching floor fixture for at-home use.
There is no shortage of modernist lighting similarly prized by collectors and casual enthusiasts alike — there are Art Deco table lamps created in a universally appreciated style, the Tripod floor lamp by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Greta Magnusson Grossman's sleek and minimalist Grasshopper lamps and, of course, the wealth of mid-century experimental lighting that emerged from Italian artisans at Arredoluce, FLOS and many more are hallmarks in illumination innovation.
With decades of design evolution behind it, home lighting is no longer just practical. Crystalline shaping by designers like Gabriel Scott turns every lighting apparatus into a luxury accessory. A new installation doesn’t merely showcase a space; carefully chosen ceiling lights, table lamps and floor lamps can create a mood, spotlight a favorite piece or highlight your unique personality.
The sparkle that your space has been missing is waiting for you amid the growing collection of antique, vintage and contemporary lighting for sale on 1stDibs.