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).
