Sputnik Style Light

Lighting can make or break your décor. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately most home decorators leave their lamps to do the dirty work, and rarely ever make use of the space above- short of changing one cover globe for another. The Sputnik light will transform even the most highly polished interior space by proudly proclaiming your attention to every detail. Granted this light, with its 20 plus extending arms is not for the faint of heart, but be prepared to give a history lesson to any of your uncultured guests. Placement of the Sputnik light should take some consideration, it will add a punch of style without overwhelming even the smallest of spaces. Chrome finish completes its futuristic nod, but be sure to purchase only light-bulbs specifically engineered for use with the Sputnik. Ground control to Major Tom- the Sputnik has landed and is still out of this world. Sputnik Light Bulbs (notincluded) : Use type E12 maximum 25 watts, any color. Pictured here with silver topped mirror light bulbs.Chrome finished arms support chrome light fittings and chrome spherical balls.Hard wire. We recommend using an electrician to install all your lamps.

DIMENSIONS: 22.5″ diameter 42.5″ height

On April 17, 1958, the Word Exhibition in Brussels presented its “Atomium”. It was a bigger-than-life 102-meter high structure that dominated the exhibition with a central spherical entry leading away from the center with life-sized tubes, 23 meters long ending in lighted spheres. The exhibit was actually a large-scale model of a metal crystal, 165 billion times its normal size. With the beginning of the pop culture 60’s designers were encouraging each other to try new and radical ideas. Between Atomium and Sputnik, lamp designers were influenced by their shapes and images as luminaire designs and one of them, Geo Sarfatti designed the sputnik light, a smaller version of the Atomium. The organizer of his own company called Arteluce, Sarfatti’s work soon became the epitome of modern lighting design, surpassing even the other notorious and industry-leading lamp design house of FLOS. Sarfatti’s sputnik light captured the imagination. Sprouting a multitude of highly polished metal arms from a central sphere, at the end were the little round lamps that made it so cunning. It was a chandelier to envy and it sold in numbers that staggered the imagination. No one was more surprised than Sarfatti, who broke the design down into a sputnik lamp, and subsequently found ways to turn the design into other types of sputnik light fixtures. His innovations included various types of bulbs and materials that delighted customers and made them feel that they were part of the space age dawning in America. It was a heady time for American lighting designers who took advantage of the spirit that hit the country by designing fixtures with an eagerness to explore. When it finally went into mass production, the sputnik lamp was a must, in whatever form it took, to be seen in households from the more sophisticated farmhouse to city kitchens that used the ceiling fixture style and dining rooms that boasted the more decorative chandelier. The light bulbs had to be round or you didn’t have authentic sputnik light fixtures. Boys bedrooms featured scaled down versions on their study desks below posters of Shepherd, Aldrin and Glenn. Today, lighting designers still concentrate their efforts on imaginative and unique ideas, with attention to the same kind of detail that FLOS and Sarfatti implemented when they looked at space age technology and applied it to design. Although space doesn’t seem to be the target for exploration, lighting design is still orbiting the planet with designs that reflect our yearning for new ideas.