Max Ingrand “1498” Ceiling Lamp for Fontana Arte, 1955

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Max Ingrand “1498” ceiling lamp for Fontana Arte, Italy, 1955.

Six slender brass rods hang from a cylindrical brass canopy and meet a round plate fixed with small bolts, from which the diffuser is suspended. The diffuser is a shallow bowl of frosted glass with a wide central opening, finished with a brass-edged metal ring. Inside the opening sits a nested conical reflector, so the light is filtered through the frosted glass and also directed downward. A large clear glass disc with a beveled edge extends well beyond the bowl and acts as a floating halo around the fixture. Seen from below, the concentric rings of the disc, bowl and ring form a layered composition. The brass has developed a natural patina. Fontana Arte was founded in Milan in 1932 around the glassworks of Luigi Fontana, with Pietro Chiesa and Gio Ponti shaping its early identity. Under them the company established the idea that glass could be an architectural material, cut, curved, beveled and engraved to define a space and not only to decorate it. Max Ingrand, a French designer trained in the stained glass tradition, took over as artistic director in 1954 and brought to Milan a different sensibility, closer to French glass and to the interplay of transparency, light and metal. The "1498" belongs to this first phase of his work for the company. The oversized clear disc and the frosted bowl recall the layered glass compositions of the Ponti and Chiesa years, while the exposed brass structure and the restrained geometry are typical of Italian lighting in the mid-1950s.