As with lots 401 and 406, Bracciodiferro intended to produce an edition of 100 examples of the present model, although only approximately 4 were made, as noted by Anty Pansera in the catalogue accompanying her recent exhibition, Bracciodiferro: Gaetano Pesce – Alessandro Mendini 1971-1975, in which the present “Letargo” appeared. Like Gaetano Pesce’s outsized “Moloch,” Mendini’s own postmodern “ridisegno” took as its source a modernist precursor, Marianne Brandt’s lacquered steel “Kandem” table lamp (1928), which Mendini enlarged and cast in bronze. Pansera observes that Brandt’s lamp has been reduced—(increased actually)—“to the semblance of the object it once was, as if in hibernation (letargo in Italian). Indeed, the decision to present it drowning in a sea of mud was no accident. The designer remembers that it was part of a small series of 'objects for spiritual use' that were designed for a number of covers for Casabella magazine when he was the editor.”