Table Lamp by Seguso for Stilnovo

Members of the Seguso family have been leading figures in the manufacture of glass on the Venetian island of Murano since the late 1300s, but for most collectors of vintage design the name evokes two companies formed in the first half of the 20th century. Seguso Vetri d’Arte, born from a small consortium of master glass artisans that included Archimede Seguso (1909–99), thrived under the artistic directorship of Flavio Poli (1900–84), a designer with an eye for modern forms, color and pattern. Vetreria Archimede Seguso, meanwhile, was founded in 1946, when Seguso opened his own atelier in order to employ classical techniques in the making of modern glassware.

The owners of Seguso Vetri d’Arte were justly proud of their skills as craftsmen, but they were not worldly aesthetes — and they knew it. Poli had studied at the Art Institute of Venice, originally working in ceramics before switching mediums and taking up the art of glass. He introduced new simple forms to the genre — the best known of his designs being the Valva, which resembles a clamshell in profile — and employed several novel techniques such as corroso, which gives glass a rough, emery-board-like finish. Poli’s most collectible works are his sommerso pieces, made with a layering process in which clear and colored-glass vessels are “submerged” within one another, producing a kind of nesting-doll effect in striking, elegant vases with bands of separate and overlapped hues.

At his eponymous workshop, Archimede Seguso often favored highly decorative, age-old techniques employed with modern restraint. His layered-glass Losanghe vessels have the look of an abstract checkerboard while his free-form Merletto vases have delicate, lacy patterns created by painstakingly twisting two heated glass straws to create helixes around the walls of the piece.

Though different in their scope and mission, both of these furnaces bearing the Seguso name created some of the most beautiful, alluring and exquisitely crafted works in all of modern design.

Though Bruno Gatta (1904–76) founded Stilnovo way back in 1946, it is still one of the most instantly recognizable names in lighting. Gatta began his business in Milan, and, like many European creatives designing furniture and decor in the wake of World War II, Stilnovo leaned toward the new wave of mass-market and streamlined styles. In fact, Stilnovo loosely translates to “new style” in Italian, and vintage Stilnovo lighting has endured as a practical choice for those looking to bring innovative and forward-thinking design into their homes.

Soon after Stilnovo was established, Gatta’s lighting fixtures were applauded throughout Europe for their novel industrial materials as well as their unique yet functional shapes. Italy in the 1950s was forming a completely revolutionized look, and Bruno Gatta and Stilnovo’s head designer, Angelo Gaetano Sciolari, helped shape it. When the 1960s arrived, Stilnovo was experiencing such a boom that the company opened a new production plant in Lainate. One of the brand’s most famous pieces, Giovanni Luigi Gorgoni’s quirky 1965 Buonanotte spherical table lamp, became a best seller.

Gatta partnered with some of the most well-known names in design, including Ettore Sottsass, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Joe Colombo and Gae Aulenti. Sottsass’s pieces for Stilnovo, including the 1977 Valigia four-legged table lamp, the 1968 Lampros chandelier and Manifesto ceiling light, and the Castiglionis’ 1957 Saliscendi pendant light fixtures are some of the brand’s most recognizable to date. In 1978, De Pas, D’Urbino and Lomazzi designed the Fante lamp with an adjustable reflector that playfully recalls a broad-brimmed hat.

Stilnovo’s designs, including Danilo and Corrado Aroldi’s flexible Periscope table lamp, were featured in the 1972 exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” at the Museum of Modern Art. While Stilnovo continued to operate with new designer collaborations after Gatta’s death, it closed its doors in 1988. Italian art director Massimo Anselmi acquired the company in 2012 and rereleased several of Stilnovo’s most celebrated pieces. Then in 2019, lighting giant Linea Light Group purchased Stilnovo and relaunched its classic designs with contemporary touches like LED lighting systems.

Find vintage Stilnovo chandeliers and pendants, wall lights, floor lamps and other fixtures and furniture on 1stDibs.