Lamp designs with automotive light source

Two iconic lights are our icon(s) of the month and brighten up the slowly darkening days of October. The Artemide Tolomeo and Tiszio lamps are classics.

The idea for the cable pull system, which enables the Tolomeo to be moved continuously, came to its creator Michele De Lucchi when he observed coastal fishermen at sea who were still using the old Trabucchi, traditional fishing gallows. With the construction of ropes, rods and levers, heavy objects can be moved relatively easily. The Italian designer thought that a similar principle could also be used for a table lamp. The Tolomeo is now available in numerous versions, is exhibited as an art object in the world's most famous museums and has long since become the epitome of the design-conscious desk lamp.

The Tizio, created by Richard Sapper, was designed as a functional task light for the desk. Lightweight components were to be used for its mobility, without complex cabling. So the designer came up with the idea of using a low-voltage halogen lamp - a light source that until then had mainly been used in car headlights. He used the arms of the luminaire as electrical conductors. The Tizio thus became a cult object of the 1980s and collected numerous design awards - including the coveted Compasso d'Oro - and is a permanent fixture at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

You can find the icon(s) of the month October in our exhibition , category Design and the decade of the 1970s and 1980s.