Sorella Guzzini

Harvey Guzzini may sound like a single designer, but it was actually a mid-century Italian lighting company started by six brothers in the Guzzini family: Giovanni, Raimondo, Giuseppe, Adolfo, Virgilio and Giannunzio. The first part of the name was an homage to the 1950 film Harvey. Compounding the historical record even further, it seems that the Guzzini company rebranded many times in the 20th century, going by, at various points, Harvey Creazioni, Guzzini, Illuminazione Guzzini and iGuzzini. 

The Harvey Guzzini brand produced a range of fixtures during the postwar years, including table lamps, floor lamps and pendant lights. 

Harvey Guzzini was founded in 1959 in a room of Giovanni's home in the town of Recanati. Initially, the company was focused on making copper decorative objects. The brothers quickly established their own studio space and, in 1963, they expanded into lighting production. The following year, they hired prolific Italian designer Luigi Massoni as head of design. In addition to Harvey Guzzini, Massoni was involved with many of Italy’s most influential brands, such as Poltrona Frau and Alessi. 

Another key to the growing success of Harvey Guzzini was partnerships with a number of Italy's most prominent designers, including Gio Ponti, Fabio Lenci, Rodolfo Bonetto, Cesare Casati and Ennio Lucini.

From 1967 to 1968, Harvey Guzzini also participated in “Domus: Formes Italiennes,” an exhibition held at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. By 1969, the company had grown into one of the best-known design firms in the country and opened a retail outlet in central Milan. Famous Harvey Guzzini designs include Massoni and Luciano Buttura's Mushroom table lamp (1965) as well as the in-house designed Arc floor lamp (1968), Faro table lamp (1970) and Toledo table lamp (1973). 

In 1974, Harvey Guzzini rebranded as iGuzzini. The company introduced a range of new and technically advanced lighting fixtures, including low-voltage halogen lamps. In 1977, iGuzzini organized the first Italian lighting design conference. In 1991, it was awarded the Compasso d'Oro for its commitment to design.

Today, iGuzzini remains headquartered in Recanati and is a leading international architectural lighting group with a rich heritage spanning more than six decades since its early days as Harvey Guzzini. The company creates lighting fixtures for workplaces, city infrastructure and even cultural heritage sites.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Harvey Guzzini table lamps, floor lamps and other lighting.

Arguably the world’s most ubiquitous man-made material, plastic has impacted nearly every industry. In contemporary spaces, new and vintage plastic furniture is quite popular and its use pairs well with a range of design styles.

From the Italian lighting artisans at Fontana Arte to venturesome Scandinavian modernists such as Verner Panton, who created groundbreaking interiors as much as he did seating — see his revolutionary Panton chair — to contemporary multidisciplinary artists like Faye Toogood, furniture designers have been pushing the boundaries of plastic forever.

When The Graduate's Mr. McGuire proclaimed, “There’s a great future in plastics,” it was more than a laugh line. The iconic quote is an allusion both to society’s reliance on and its love affair with plastic. Before the material became an integral part of our lives — used in everything from clothing to storage to beauty and beyond — people relied on earthly elements for manufacturing, a process as time-consuming as it was costly.

Soon after American inventor John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid, which could mimic luxury products like tortoiseshell and ivory, production hit fever pitch, and the floodgates opened for others to explore plastic’s full potential. The material altered the history of design — mid-century modern legends Charles and Ray Eames, Joe Colombo and Eero Saarinen regularly experimented with plastics in the development of tables and chairs, and today plastic furnishings and decorative objects are seen as often indoors as they are outside.

Find vintage plastic lounge chairs, outdoor furniture, lighting and more 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.