American Polished Chrome Tripod Reading Lamp by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings

At a time when much of the world was enraptured by modernism’s anti-ornamental, function-forward aesthetic, Terence Harold “T.H.” Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905–76) — “Gibby” to his friends and close clients — was something different: an unapologetic classicist. That said, you’d be forgiven for not recognizing as much in some of his work, such as 1950’s refined Tripod floor lamp; the designer had a way of distilling classical forms to their essence so that the end result was actually similar to that of more modern designers of his time.

After studying architecture at London University, Robsjohn-Gibbings landed a naval job designing interiors for passenger ships. Later, he worked for antiques dealer Charles Duveen (younger brother to influential art dealer Joseph Duveen) and in 1929 was transferred to sell Elizabethan and Jacobean antiques out of the firm’s New York City showroom.

Robsjohn-Gibbings returned to London within a few years but came back to Manhattan in 1936 and opened his own plaster-walled studio, Robsjohn-Gibbings Limited, filled with furniture he’d designed based on drawings of British antiques. The shop attracted a certain set of well-heeled clients, among them Doris Duke, Elizabeth Arden and Alfred Knopf. During this time, Robsjohn-Gibbings also wrote frequently about the subject of modern design, bemoaning the lack of beauty in much of the current furniture, most notably in a much buzzed about 1944 book, Good-bye, Mr. Chippendale. His success in the Manhattan design scene also yielded a partnership with Hansen Lighting Co., which produced the 1950 Tripod lamp with a suite of elegant, low-slung furniture that Robsjohn-Gibbings designed for Widdicomb Furniture beginning in the late 1940s.

The Tripod lamp, no longer in production, features a three-pronged base in brass, with three svelte legs joined by a simple brass cuff in the center. A linen drum shade with a light diffuser gives the lamp a warm glow when lit, an apt symbol of Robsjohn-Gibbings’s disdain for the “cold” look of Bauhaus-style modernism.

Subsequent versions of the Tripod lamp include a brushed nickel and a polished chrome finish, all with the same white linen shade. The fixture is one of the last “modern-looking” pieces Robsjohn-Gibbings would create; by the early 1960s, he had embarked on a project with Greek cabinetmakers Susan and Eleftherios Saridis to reproduce Greek motifs in furniture, designing the Klismos collection. He would eventually move to Athens, where he worked for shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. 

British-born designer, interior decorator and author T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905–76) was one of the great American tastemakers in the middle decades of the 20th century. Much like Edward Wormley, Robsjohn-Gibbings was a design classicist by education and inclination, but he would come to create some of the most gracious and livable modern furnishings of the era.

Robsjohn-Gibbings studied architecture at the University of London, then held various jobs that included designing décors for passenger liners and working as the art director of a film studio. In the early 1930s, while employed by the upper-crust interior designer Charles J. Duveen, Robsjohn-Gibbings experienced an epiphany during a visit to the British Museum. Examining the furniture depicted on ancient Greek ceramics — lithe stools and klismos chairs — he realized that he had found a design touchstone. By 1936, he had moved to New York and set up a showroom on Madison Avenue for his modern reinterpretations of classic Greek designs. Aided by contacts he’d developed while working with Duveen, he quickly established a clientele that included Elizabeth Arden, Doris Duke and Thelma Chrysler Foy.

Through his writings for magazines and books, Robsjohn-Gibbings earned a public following and was established as an urbane arbiter of taste. From 1943 to 1956, he produced an understated line of modernist furnishings for Widdicomb, which included one of the icons of the period: the tiered, biomorphic Mesa coffee table (1951). Robsjohn-Gibbings moved to Athens, Greece, in 1966, and created a new line of antiquity-inspired pieces for the firm Saridis. The series turned out to be his swan song.

Collectors’ interest in Robsjohn-Gibbings was reignited in the 1980s, when the 200-plus pieces from his 1936–38 commission for the Bel-Air estate of Los Angeles socialite Hilda Boldt Weber — pared-down neoclassical pieces rendered in blond wood (with the occasional flourish) — came on the market. (Up until then, the collection had remained in the house, despite its having changed hands several times.) 

But his work for Widdicomb remains his most widely known, appreciated for its elegance and generous proportions. Robsjohn-Gibbings despised the stern aesthetic associated with his Bauhaus contemporaries, and a keynote of his modernist pieces is that they have no sharp angles. His chair and sofa frames, table legs and even many cabinets feature softly contoured edges. In whatever styled he designed, Robsjohn-Gibbings was guided by simplicity and timelessness. He wanted his furniture to be lived with happily.