Flos Miss K
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic, Plexiglass
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Table Lamps
Chrome, Steel, Aluminum
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Stainless Steel
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Patio and Garden Furniture
Aluminum
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Patio and Garden Furniture
Aluminum
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic, Fabric
People Also Browsed
Vintage 1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Chandeliers and Pendants
Brass, Sheet Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary American Mid-Century Modern Wall Lights an...
Enamel, Brass
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Sofas
Velvet, Walnut
2010s Italian Wardrobes and Armoires
Walnut
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Organic Modern Chandeliers and Pen...
Brass
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Screens and Room Dividers
Paper
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Steel
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Table Lamps
Resin
2010s American Modern Table Lamps
Steel, Brass, Silver Leaf
2010s American Modern Wall Lights and Sconces
Brass
21st Century and Contemporary Mexican Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Textile, Wood
21st Century and Contemporary Mexican Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Textile, Wood
21st Century and Contemporary Finnish Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Brass, Metal
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Modern Coffee and Cocktail Tables
Onyx
21st Century and Contemporary Portuguese Mid-Century Modern Sofas
Brass
Recent Sales
2010s Italian Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
21st Century and Contemporary Modern Table Lamps
Plastic
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Patio and Garden Furniture
Aluminum
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Patio and Garden Furniture
Metal
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Patio and Garden Furniture
Metal
Flos for sale on 1stDibs
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.
Materials: plastic Furniture
Arguably the world’s most ubiquitous man-made material, plastic has impacted nearly every industry. In contemporary spaces, new and vintage plastic furniture is quite popular and its use pairs well with a range of design styles.
From the Italian lighting artisans at Fontana Arte to venturesome Scandinavian modernists such as Verner Panton, who created groundbreaking interiors as much as he did seating — see his revolutionary Panton chair — to contemporary multidisciplinary artists like Faye Toogood, furniture designers have been pushing the boundaries of plastic forever.
When The Graduate's Mr. McGuire proclaimed, “There’s a great future in plastics,” it was more than a laugh line. The iconic quote is an allusion both to society’s reliance on and its love affair with plastic. Before the material became an integral part of our lives — used in everything from clothing to storage to beauty and beyond — people relied on earthly elements for manufacturing, a process as time-consuming as it was costly.
Soon after American inventor John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid, which could mimic luxury products like tortoiseshell and ivory, production hit fever pitch, and the floodgates opened for others to explore plastic’s full potential. The material altered the history of design — mid-century modern legends Charles and Ray Eames, Joe Colombo and Eero Saarinen regularly experimented with plastics in the development of tables and chairs, and today plastic furnishings and decorative objects are seen as often indoors as they are outside.
Find vintage plastic lounge chairs, outdoor furniture, lighting and more on 1stDibs.