Modernica for George Nelson Saucer Bubble Lamp c.2002

The Nelson Saucer Bubble Pendant ceiling lamp’s design began with quite a relatable quandary. While redesigning his office at Herman Miller, George Nelson (1908–86), the American architect, writer and furniture maker who served as design director from 1945–72, found a lamp he loved. It was a Swedish design, covered in silk, and, at $125, it was very expensive. So what’s cheaper and more readily available than silk? Plastic.

After reading about a method for protecting the decks of docked ships from moths, which involved spraying a self-webbing plastic onto nets, Nelson had one of his “zaps” — the term he used to describe his moments of creative inspiration. The inventive architect decided to merge that moth-preventing technique with the style of the Swedish lamp he coveted. He designed a frame of steel wire, then sprayed it with plastic to create a smooth and translucent shell. The result differed little from his original inspiration. “When you put a light in it, it glowed, and it did not cost $125,” Nelson said of his 1952 Bubble lamp line and UFO-shaped Saucer Bubble Pendant. 

For Nelson, whose talents spanned a number of areas, the saucer’s distinctive glow held special, holistic value. Not only did it result in an intriguing form for the lamp itself, but it also cast a flattering light on the space it occupied as well as on the furniture inside it. 

Writing in Everyday Art Quarterly in 1952, Nelson credited his associate William C. Renwick for the design — originally produced for the Howard Miller Company, once a division of Herman Miller — as well as “its successful outcome.” Today, the Nelson Saucer Bubble Pendant lamp is manufactured by Herman Miller.

Architect, designer, and writer George Nelson was a central figure in the mid-century American modernist design movement; and his thoughts influenced not only the furniture we live with, but also how we live.

Nelson came to design via journalism and literature. Upon receiving his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Yale in 1931, he won the Prix de Rome fellowship, and spent his time in Europe writing magazine articles that helped bring stateside recognition to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gio Ponti, Le Corbusier and other canonical modernist architects. In the 1940s, Nelson wrote texts that suggested such now-commonplace ideas as open-plan houses, storage walls and family rooms. D.J. De Pree, the owner of the furniture maker Herman Miller, was so impressed by Nelson that in 1944 — following the sudden death of Gilbert Rohde, who had introduced the firm to modern design in the 1930s — he invited Nelson to join the company as its design director.

There Nelson’s curatorial design talents came to the fore. To Herman Miller he brought such eminent creators as Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and the textile and furniture designer Alexander Girard. Thanks to a clever contract, at the same time as he directed Herman Miller he formed a New York design company, George Nelson & Associates, that sold furniture designs to the Michigan firm, as well as its competitor, the Howard Miller Clock Company. Nelson’s New York team of designers (who were rarely individually credited) would create such iconic pieces as the Marshmallow sofa, the Coconut chair, the Ball clock, the Bubble lamp series and the many cabinets and beds that comprise the sleek Thin-Edge line.

For dedicated collectors, as well as for interior designers who look beyond “the look,” there is a “cool-factor” inherent to vintage pieces from George Nelson and others. Nelson was in on it from the start, and it’s valuable to have a piece that was there with him. But still, as is evident from the offerings from dealers on these pages, in any of the designs, in any iteration whose manufacture Nelson oversaw and encouraged, there are shining elements of lightness, elegance, sophistication — and a little bit of swagger. George Nelson felt confident in his ideas about design and didn’t mind letting the world know.