Koch & Lowy Lighting
Collectors know Koch & Lowy for its eye-catching sold brass five-arm chandeliers, sleek chrome swing-arm floor lamps and clever table lamps with marble bases. With a wide range of sculptural mid-century modern and 1970s-era fixtures created by the likes of George Nelson, Karl Springer, Piotr Sierakowski and others, the American lighting manufacturer elevated the design of furniture and home decor from the postwar era onward.
Ernest Lowy founded Koch & Lowy in New York in 1946, initially running the firm with his son, Thomas. Over the years, collaborations with notable designers such as American artist Neal Small — known as the “Prince of Plastic” for his innovative use of Plexiglas and Lucite — yielded iconic pieces such as Koch & Lowy’s biomorphic, clear-glass pendant lights and wall sconces for German manufacturer Peill and Putzler as well as the rare Half Nelson table lamp.
Created by George Nelson — an architect, journalist and designer who brought a slew of legendary designers to Herman Miller while he was director of design at the company — the Half Nelson table lamp, with its striking form and shade of spun aluminum, was originally designed in 1950 as part of an architectural project of Nelson’s on Long Island. Koch & Lowy put it into production in the late 1970s.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Koch & Lowy floor lamps gained wide acclaim. Neal Small’s architectural aluminum periscope Skyscraper floor lamp and their Pharmacy tent floor lamp, which Thomas Lowy admitted he copied unwittingly from Omaha architect Cedric Hartman, were particularly popular.
“I’d bought a tent [lamp] in Italy, but it had been made so badly that I decided to make a better one,” Lowy explained to the New York Times in 1976. “I didn’t know that the Italian one wasn’t original. I didn’t know it was a copy of Hartman’s design.”
Nevertheless, Koch & Lowy enjoyed success designing and producing innovative lighting fixtures and other furniture such as the brutalist Mirage coffee table, created by Polish designer and head of Koch & Lowy’s design department, Piotr Sierakowski.
While Thomas Lowy sold the company in the 1990s, the brand’s impact on modernist lighting design endures.
On 1stDibs, find a range of vintage Koch & Lowy lighting and tables.
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Koch & Lowy Lighting
Brass
1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Chrome
1970s German Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Smoked Glass
1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Metal, Chrome
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Koch & Lowy Lighting
Carrara Marble, Chrome
Late 20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Koch & Lowy Lighting
Metal, Brass
1960s American Bauhaus Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Stone, Brass, Metal
1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Steel, Chrome
1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Steel
1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Carrara Marble, Chrome
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Koch & Lowy Lighting
Marble, Chrome
Mid-20th Century German Koch & Lowy Lighting
Nickel
1950s German Vintage Koch & Lowy Lighting
Opal, Nickel
