Sciolari Chrome 8 Arm Chandelier

Sciolari Lighting was the first Italian lighting company to sell its pieces in the United States. Its luminous work spanned decades of styles and innovative designs, including striking chandeliers, table lamps and wall lights. 

Italian designer Angelo Gaetano Sciolari took over his family’s lighting company after his father’s death in 1949. He had studied architecture and was previously pursuing a career as a film director. In the 1950s, Sciolari became an in-house designer for Italian entrepreneur and designer Bruno Gatta and his lighting manufacturing company Stilnovo. 

By the late 1960s, Sciolari was using his own manufacturing company in combination with Lightolier to reach the American market. His 1970s designs are considered among his best work, including the Cubic Chandelier and other pieces from his Cubic Series, which featured in popular American television shows such as Dallas.

A talented designer, Sciolari preferred using crystal and glass with polished metals, including unconventional combinations like brass and chrome. He crossed many design styles and drew influence from art movements including Cubism, Deconstructivism and Minimalism. His later work, in collaboration with S.A. Boulanger and Stilkronen, involved Hollywood Regency-style fixtures, while his 1970s work reflected Art Deco influences and Space Age aesthetics.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Sciolari Lighting chandeliers and pendants, floor lamps, table lamps and more.

Founded in 1904 in New York and family-operated through most of its history, Lightolier was one of the pioneering American electric lighting companies, best known for its embrace of stylistic and technical innovations.

Collectors focus on vintage Lightolier lighting fixtures produced from the 1950s and into the 1970s, when an in-house design team led by Gerald Thurston — and a stellar cast of international design contributors — created an array of practical yet aesthetically lively table lamps, floor lamps, sconces and chandeliers.

Amidst the post-World War II building boom, Lightolier — the name combines “light” and “chandelier” — aggressively boosted its residential lighting division. Thurston, who was strongly influenced by the sleek designs of Gino Sarfatti and his Italian lighting firm Arteluce, towards simpler lamp designs that offered flexibility of function. His best-known designs include the Cricket task light — a lamp with an adjustable enameled metal hood that toggles on a slender bent-metal base — and the three-legged Tripod floor lamp. At the same time, Thurston had a wonderful eye for talent and sought work from some of the lesser-known greats of the era, such as Paavo Tynell, the Finnish lighting designer, who designed several brass chandeliers for Lightolier with his trademark elegant flamboyance.

And more, Thurston recognized abilities in designers not known for their work in lighting.

Edward Wormley, head of furniture design for Dunbar, produced several noteworthy chandeliers employing canisters and reflective hoods. Alvin Lustig was famed as a graphic designer. His ca. 1953 Ring ceiling fixture for Lightolier had a minimalist techno look some 30 years ahead of its time. But this was par. Designed by Michael Lax in 1964, the Lytegem high-intensity lamp — included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art — features a ball-shaped shade attached with a chromed armature to a cubic base, a form that would be widely copied in the following decade. Chandeliers designed in the early 1970s by Gaetano Sciolari, with details such as acrylic diffusers and vertical, two-bulb arms, would define the look of lighting in their day.

A look through these pages reveals just how astonishingly wide a range of lighting pieces Lightolier produced. The company never flicked off its stylistic switch.

Find a collection of vintage Lightolier lamps and other lighting fixtures on 1stDibs.