Purple Tiffany Lamp

Italian designer Sabrina Landini is best known for her seductive handmade decorative objects and lighting. Supported by a small team of assistants in Tuscany, Landini creates bright and optimistic modernist pieces that reflect strong femininity. Her eponymous brand's elegant Tiffany series of lighting fixtures — a celebrated line that includes table lamps, floor lamps and more — is inspired by Audrey Hepburn’s iconic character in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Landini grew up in Montelupo, Italy, not far from Florence. As a child, she enjoyed watching her father work as a glassmaker. She became fascinated by the way he transformed silicon powder into bright objects of crystal and glass.

As an adult, Landini moved to Milan, Italy, and opened a modest studio in the Navigli area. Landini created her first home furnishing at this workshop in Navigli — a light fixture that would be the inaugural piece in her Tiffany line. Topped with handcrafted hourglass-shaped lampshades made of organza silk or fine fabrics such as satin — and gathered at the center by a signature belt of silvered glass — the aged brass-stemmed Tiffany lamps are Landini’s trademark design, the one she is most proud of. While the Tiffany series draws on the Hepburn film, her Butterfly hanging fixtures and Sunshine floor lamps feature natural-world motifs and are inclusive of colored glass panes, handmade Japanese paper and Art Deco–inspired hardware.

Later, Landini moved to Pietrasanta, Tuscany, and opened an atelier. As a designer, she wanted to imbue her modern pieces with the rich heritage of Tuscan art. Today Landini and her team work with a range of rich materials — crystals, silks, precious stones and more — to create one-of-a-kind functional designs for storage cabinets, tables, mirrors and other furniture and decor.

On 1stDibs, explore authentic Sabrina Landini chandeliers, wall decorations, seating 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 right table lamp, outwardly sculptural chandelier or understated wall pendant can work wonders for your home. 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. A wide range of antique and vintage lighting can be found on 1stDibs.

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.