Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic I have plenty to say on the subject of “the big light” in a room. To my mind, single-source overhead illumination is blinding, migraine-making and anxiety-inducing. It’s also completely unnecessary — especially given that lighting designer Richard Kelly and architect Philip Johnson created a radical, brilliant alternative in the middle of the 20th century. The two late visionaries turned the way you light a room on its head — and the reintroduction of their design this year, after a gap in production of 58 years, is happy news for those who favour lighting that glows rather than glares. The floor lamp Kelly designed in 1953 for Johnson’s famous Modernist Glass House in Connecticut works from the ground up, reflecting the light from a bulb twice: upwards into a coned top, then down and out, spreading a soft glow around the surrounding floor. The object itself looks like a simple drum, reminiscent of both Bauhaus engineering and a Japanese pagoda. The top of it isn’t much higher than head height when you’re seated, so it feels humble as much as it looks handsome.“It’s a little piece of architecture,” says Craig Bassam, one half of Connecticut-based design practice BassamFellows, which is responsible for bringing the design back. “There’s no front, back or sides, which is important in a glass house, where you live in the round and have to make sure the back of a chair looks as good as the front. It’s why so many art collectors loved to have that lamp in their homes.” The best he’s seen it? “Next to a Marino Marini or a Mark Rothko.”In photographs of the great and the good of yesteryear’s American art world, the light makes constant cameos. It features in the apartment of William AM Burden, president of MoMA, and in the guest house that Johnson made for Blanchette Rockefeller on East 52nd Street (which was later donated to the museum). It’s there in a shot of Johnson at home in the Glass House, entertaining Andy Warhol and his peers. The design will make its 21st-century return at the 3daysofdesign festival in Copenhagen in June before going on sale in the autumn. Its reappearance is under contract with Johnson’s Glass House trust and Addison Kelly, Richard’s daughter. In many ways, Bassam and his partner Scott Fellows have become part of the extended family.The duo founded their studio in 2003, creating woodwork and upholstered furniture that fits into the canon of celebrated mid-century modern masters. Their lives have been entwined with the history of the lamp since 2007, when they moved into the 1951 house that Philip Johnson built for Richard and Geraldine Hodgson. “The Hodgsons had one of the original lamps, but they took it with them,” says Fellows. “But they did leave behind some bespoke furniture [commissioned] by Johnson in the 1980s, including a granite block side table with a custom version of the lamp embedded in it. We turned it on the first night we stayed in the house and instantly understood the power of the design.”Richard Kelly went on to illuminate many an architectural masterpiece — most notably the Seagram Building in Manhattan — and his scenography is brilliantly theatrical. “He always illuminated the outside areas, too,” explains Bassam, “so when you turn on the lamp, the glass walls immediately disappear, and you see straight through to the courtyard and surrounding rooms. It’s a real ‘pow’ moment.”The floor lamp was created to solve a problem. Johnson’s aesthetic was all about transparency. But transparency equals reflections. Remembering his friend Kelly two years after his death in 1977, at a ceremony to launch a scholarship fund in his name, Johnson explained just how important the lamp was to his architectural aesthetic: “When I first moved into the Glass House, there was no light other than the sun. You can imagine the problem with reflections. When it got dark outside . . . If you had one bulb, you saw six. Richard founded the art of residential lighting the day he designed the lighting for the Glass House. He realised there was no other place to put the lights but the floor.”There was a custom version of the lamp. We turned it on the first night we stayed in the house and instantly understood the power of the designFew of us live in 1950s Modernist pavilions that warrant inclusion on open house itineraries, but many of us have glass extensions. “More people are choosing to live in transparent architecture, and the challenges are still being overlooked,” says Fellows. “Also, good floor lamps are hard to find — they are too decorative, statement-making, bland, or simply not functional.” While many people love a 1960s Arco floor lamp, its cantilevered arm sweeping into the overhead space can make you feel like there’s a Triffid in the room. Isamu Noguchi’s mid-century Akari lanterns are undeniably beautiful, but they are as much sculpture as they are light sources, dominating more than the corner they occupy with their washi paper structures. The 1953 Philip Johnson and Richard Kelly floor lamp has been refined significantly since its original launch. The first pieces were manufactured by US lighting brand Edison Price with three legs; they looked great in pictures but toppled over constantly. Stover Jenkins, architect and co-author of The Houses of Philip Johnson, thinks it was deliberate: “[Johnson] loved a little sense of danger,” he says. “He was probably thrilled about any precariousness.” As tricky as those tripod lamps were, they are now design treasures. One of the originals that had been used in the Glass House went for $63,000 in 1999 at Christie’s in New York, leaving its auction estimate of $10,000-$15,000 in the dust. A pair of the later four-legged versions, meanwhile, sold for $15,120 at Wright in Chicago in 2023. The BassamFellows version is sturdy, rendered in sleek stainless steel. “The originals were brass, which is soft, with an aluminium shade that always fell off,” says Fellows. “I’ve never seen an original that isn’t dented. Stainless steel means you notice the materiality less. You focus on the quality of light.”On a wall in Bassam and Fellows’ bedroom, there is a set of yellow drawers that pay homage to Donald Judd. The minimalist artist and furniture maker famously agreed with the designers about light fittings, elaborating on the subject in his 1993 essay “It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp”. Judd loathed most of what was made in the guise of Modernism, writing: “Almost all furniture made since the 1920s and much before in any of the ‘styles, ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’, has been junk for consumers.” He singled out Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Philip Johnson’s mentor) as an exception. Today there are a thousand and one designer lamps out there, but the best ones prioritise you, the user, over the designer. The Johnson and Kelly lamp does precisely that.Price $9,995; bassamfellows.comFind out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
