Taraxacum 88 Ceiling & Wall lamp by Achille Castiglioni for Flos. Italy 1988

Inspired by the shape of a dandelion — and named for the flowering plant in Latin — the Taraxacum 1 pendant lamp exemplifies the ideas, technology and sense of play that galvanized Italian design in the decades following World War II.

This was a period in which art and design were moving away from geometric shapes and toward organic ones. Designers embarked on countless experiments with new materials — for example, the Taraxacum’s resin “cocoon,” which protects its steel core and allows for the diffusion of light, was created with sprayed plastic polymers originally intended for military use. Such innovation was a hallmark of Italian lighting pioneer brothers Achille (1918–2002) and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (1913–68).

Milan born and bred, Achille Castiglioni earned an architecture degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1944, while his brother Pier Giacomo, also an architect, graduated in 1937. Achille soon joined Pier Giacomo and their older brother, Livio, working on industrial products and furniture design at a practice the elder Castiglionis founded in the late 1930s. (Livio left the office in 1952.)

Before Pier Giacomo passed away in 1968, he and Achille would collaborate on interiors as well as numerous nimble-minded and revered designs, such as the charming and unmistakable Snoopy lamp (1967) as well as the Arco lamp (1962), which answers the question: What would it look like if we brought street lighting inside?

Designed in 1960, the Taraxacum hanging lamp diffuses a soft, warm light that is suitable for any dining area. Clever and striking, it remains one of the most popular lamps from legendary Italian lighting company FLOS. In 1988, Achille updated its design, which is sold today as the Taraxacum 88 lamp.

Imaginative lighting is a longtime hallmark of modern Italian design. Following in the footsteps of innovative companies such as Artemide and Arteluce, the company FLOS brought a fresh aesthetic philosophy to the Italian lighting field in the 1960s, one that would produce several of the iconic floor lamp, table lamp and pendant light designs of the era.

FLOS — Latin for “flower” — was founded in the northern town of Merano in 1962 by Cesare Cassina (of the famed Cassina furniture-making family) and Dino Gavina, a highly cultured businessman who believed that artistic ideas espoused in postwar Italy could inform commercial design. The two enlisted brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni as their first designers.

Even before FLOS was formally incorporated, the Castiglionis gave the firm one of its enduring successes with the Taraxacum pendant and associated designs made by spraying an elastic polymer on a metal armature. (George Nelson had pioneered the technique in the United States in the early 1950s.) For other designs, the brothers found inspiration in everyday objects. Suggestive of streetlights, their Arco floor lamp, with its chrome boom and ball-shaped shade sweeping out from a marble block base, has become a staple of modernist decors. Designing for FLOS since 1966, Tobia Scarpa has also been inspired by the commonplace. His folded-metal Foglio sconces resemble a shirt cuff; his carved marble Biagio table lamp looks like a jai alai basket.

In 1973, FLOS purchased Arteluce, the company founded in 1939 by Gino Sarfatti, and it continues to produce his designs. In recent decades, FLOS has contracted work from several noted designers, including Marcel Wanders and Jasper Morrison. As instantly recognizable as they are, many FLOS designs remain accessible. While FLOS lighting is the essence of modernity, its sleek, subtle designs can be used to strike a sculptural note in even traditional spaces.

Browse a broad range of FLOS lighting fixtures at 1stDibs.