The Lamp That Lit the Glass House Returns From the Archives

"But when the sun dipped below the horizon, the very feature that made the Glass House revolutionary - its glass walls - revealed an unexpected problem: glare, reflection, and a lack of ambient warmth. In a typical home, light is shaped, reflected, and diffused by walls and partitions - and the Glass House had none. With no surfaces to temper the light, no architectural cues to define where lighting should go, and nowhere for light to land but the void,"

"The result was a floor lamp that was functionally elegant, transforming the space with its soft, even glow. For all intents and purposes, it was a lightbulb moment - one that perfectly illuminated a radically new kind of home. Now, more than 70 years later, BassamFellows is bringing the iconic 1953 Floor Lamp by Philip Johnson and Richard Kelly back into production with the full support of The Glass House, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Estate of Richard Kelly."

""He was my guru, the man who taught me the importance of lighting," Johnson once said. "When I first moved into the Glass House, there was no light other than the sun. You can imagine the problem with reflections. If you had one bulb, you saw six. When it got dark outside, there wasn't anything a lighting man could do, or so I thought. Richard founded the art of residential lighting the day he designed the lighting for the Glass House."

Philip Johnson completed the Glass House in 1949, creating a transparent home that blurred interior and exterior boundaries. The glass walls invited nature into the living space but produced glare, reflection, and a lack of ambient warmth after dark. The absence of walls eliminated surfaces that shape, reflect, and diffuse light, leaving lighting harsh and disorienting. Unsatisfied with existing fixtures, Johnson commissioned lighting designer Richard Kelly. Kelly designed a floor lamp in 1953 that emitted a soft, even glow and transformed the space. BassamFellows is reviving the iconic lamp with support from The Glass House, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Estate of Richard Kelly.

Read at Design Milk