Philip Johnson and Richard Kelly - Design New York Wednesday, July 29, 2020 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Private collection, California
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Literature

    "Modern Setting," Vogue, June 1954, p. 90
    Martin Eidelberg, ed., Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was, Montreal, 1991, p. 204

  • Catalogue Essay

    Upon completion in 1949, a glaring issue presented itself each evening at Philip Johnson’s Glass House: as the sun went down, any form of exposed-bulb lighting would reflect in the glass walls; “If you had one bulb,” wrote Johnson, “you saw six.” He devised a solution in collaboration with the architectural lighting expert Richard Kelly, designing a floor lamp that directed light upwards from a canister that took the form of a theater spotlight. The light from the canister hit the interior of the conical shade and then deflected downward over the floor. The first versions had three legs, as seen in Johnson’s Rockefeller Guest House (1950) and the Richard S. Davis House (1952). If Glass House initially had a three-legged version, by 1953 a version with four legs was in use. The latter version also featured in the exhibition “20th Century Design from the Museum Collection” at the Museum of Modern Art (1958-1959).

90

Floor lamp

designed 1954
Brass, painted aluminum.
41 in. (104.1 cm) high
Manufactured by Edison Price Inc., New York.

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $13,125

Contact Specialist

DesignNewYork@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1265

Design

New York Auction 29 July 2020