Floor Lamp by Angelo Lelii for Arredoluce, Italy, 1950s

There is something almost airborne about this floor lamp. From a flat, organically shaped marble base, a slender red-lacquered stem rises vertically, meeting a long brass arm that extends outward at an angle, held in tension by a fine steel cable. At its end, a broad shade of undulating form hovers in space, its four curving panels opening like the petals of a flower caught mid-bloom. The composition reads as an exercise in controlled imbalance; the heaviness of the marble counterweighing the expansive reach of the arm and shade, the taut cable making visible the engineering that holds the whole arrangement in equilibrium.

The base is in white marble, cut to a soft, shield-like profile. The vertical stem is tubular steel finished in a warm coral-red lacquer, pierced by the brass arm which passes through it and can be adjusted in height and angle via a brass friction joint and locking pin. A steel tension wire runs from the end of the arm back to a lower point on the stem, providing structural counterbalance. The shade is composed of four shaped panels in yellow-green lacquered metal, joined at the seams by small brass fasteners and wire stitching, their edges curling gently downward. Nested within, a white opaline glass diffuser softens and distributes the light. The brass fittings throughout, the cross-shaped joint atop the shade, the adjustment mechanisms along the stem, retain their original patina.

The lamp is the work of Angelo Lelii, designed and produced by Arredoluce in Monza during the 1950s. Lelii's lighting designs from this period are distinguished by their inventive structural logic and their capacity to give form to light itself. This particular model, with its counterbalanced arm and floral shade, belongs to a body of work in which technical ingenuity and poetic sensibility are inseparable, objects that engage not only with the spaces they illuminate but with the imagination of those who encounter them.

The lamp is in very good condition: the marble base shows minor veining and light surface marks consistent with age and the lacquered surfaces, brass hardware and opaline diffuser are well preserved. The lamp is fully functional with original wiring.

Dimensions:
H 162 cm × Reach 121 cm × Shade W 45 cm (H 63.8 × Reach 47.6 × Shade W 17.7 in)
Base: W 32.5 × D 35 cm (W 12.8 × D 13.8 in)