'1853/1' table lamp by Max Ingrand 1970s

In his first year as artistic director at the Milanese design house Fontana Arte (founded by Giò Ponti and Luigi Fontana) in 1954, French glass artist Max Ingrand (1908–69), who had made a mark in his native country creating detailed stained-glass windows for cathedrals including Notre-Dame de Paris, devised a stunningly minimal table lamp. The Fontana light would go on to be one of both Ingrand and Fontana Arte’s most recognizable creations — and indeed one of the most influential lamps in design history.

The Fontana lamp’s delightfully simple silhouette belies its technical complexities. Both the shade and body of the fixture are crafted in frosted, handblown glass, a process that required achieving an identical finish for two entirely different shapes. These parts are set atop a base of metal that is powder-coated to match the glass. Ingrand’s original lamp design was white; Fontana Arte soon reissued a version in black and now offers light gray and purple, as well as a brass variation on Ingrand’s form that’s available in several sizes.

While a monochrome table lamp bears seemingly little in common with a kaleidoscopic, figurative stained-glass panel, to Ingrand, the creative concept behind the two wasn’t so different. If he harnessed light in a certain way, Ingrand believed, a designer could define shape and give a sense of movement with no color at all. “Light was no longer just a means to breathe life into color but became a means to breathe life into an entire architecture,” the artist once said. Indeed, the original Fontana, with its charismatic shape and romantic glow, seems to come alive when powered up, Ingrand’s careful calibrations of light and form giving it an impressive depth without the need for any additional decorative details.

In-the-know aesthetes may refer to the lamp as “the 1853,” a reference to the piece’s original name and one that often appears on listings for early models. The name was later changed in order to pay tribute to its manufacturer, a certain indication of the lamp’s importance to Fontana Arte’s legacy.

Best known for its elegant and innovative vintage lighting fixtures, the Milan-based firm Fontana Arte pioneered one of the key features of 20th-century and contemporary Italian design: the union of artistry and industry wrought by partnerships between creative talents — chiefly architects — and entrepreneurial businesses. Fontana Arte is further distinguished by having had as artistic director, in succession, four of Italy’s most inventive modernist designers: Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, French transplant Max Ingrand and Gae Aulenti.

The bread and butter of the glassmaking company that Luigi Fontana founded in 1881 was plate-glass panels for the construction industry. In 1930, Fontana met Ponti — then the artistic director of the Richard Ginori ceramics workshop and the editor of the influential magazine Domus — at a biannual design exhibition that became the precursor to today’s Milan Design Triennale, and the two hatched an idea for a furniture and housewares firm. Fontana Arte was incorporated in 1932 with Ponti as its chief of design. He contributed several lamps that remain among the company’s signature works, including the orb-atop-cone Bilia table lamp and the 0024 pendant — a stratified hanging sphere.

The following year, Fontana Arte partnered with the influential Milan studio glassmaker and retailer Pietro Chiesa, who took over as artistic director. Chiesa’s designs for lighting — as well as for tables and items including vases and ashtrays — express an appreciation for fluidity and simplicity of line, as seen in works such as his flute-shaped Luminator floor lamp and the 1932 Fontana table — an arched sheet of glass that is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Six years after Chiesa’s 1948 death, the École des Beaux Arts–trained Max Ingrand took over as head of design at Fontana Arte. Ingrand brought a similarly expressive formal sensibility to wares such as lamps and mirrors, but he also had a masterful eye for the manipulation of glass surfaces — whether they be cut, frosted, acid-etched or sand-blasted. His classic design is the Fontana table lamp of 1954, which has a truncated cone shade and curved body, both of which are made of pure, chic white-frosted glass.

Following Ingrand, the often-audacious Italian architect Gae Aulenti served as the company’s artistic director from 1979 to 1996, and while she generally insisted that furnishings take second place aesthetically to architecture, she made an exception for Fontana Arte pieces such as the Tavolo con Ruote series of glass coffee and dining tables on wheels, bold lighting pieces such as the Parola series and the Giova, a combination flower vase and table lamp. As a key incubator of modern design under Aulenti’s tenure, Fontana Arte remained true to its long-held commitment — creating objects that have never been less than daring.

Find vintage Fontana Arte lighting fixtures such as pendants, table lamps and more on 1stDibs.