THE ICON | Nesso Table Lamp

Home » The Icons » THE ICON | Nesso Table Lamp

THE ICON | Nesso Table Lamp

WORDS

1970s designer lighting Giancarlo Mattioli Nesso Table Lamp The ICON series

The Artemide Nesso table lamp featured in BOS COS by Febrero Studio | Photography by Germán Saiz.

With renewed interest in the 1960s and ‘70s, there are certain lights that come to the fore. One of these is the Nesso table lamp, designed in 1967 by Giancarlo Mattioli and the practice he established – Gruppo Architetti Urbanisti Citta Nuova. Made from ABS plastic and injection moulded, its mushroom-shaped form has been reinterpreted by designers since it was first unveiled by the producers, Artemide, in orange, purple and white.

The Artemide Nesso table lamp in orange.

Recipient of numerous awards, including first prize at the Triennale Milano and represented at major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it’s often used as a bedside light or on a credenza in a living area. Its soft glow, illuminated by four concealed bulbs, evening distributes the light and glows even after it’s turned off.

Multiplicity director and interior designer Sioux Clark purchased an original Nesso table lamp five years ago, spotting it in a store in regional Victoria. Unlike today’s colours, her lamp is beige (or perhaps it was white but has turned this colour over time). “I love the curvaceous form and the way the shade folds in on itself to produce that soft quality of light,” Sioux says. “It’s an object in its own right – a piece of sculpture, and yes, you could say it’s ‘iconic’,” she adds.

The Artemide Nesso table lamp featured in the Paperbark House by Madeleine Blanchfield Architects. Photography by Pablo Veiga.

The Artemide Nesso table lamp featured in Nine-Square Bondi by Madeleine Blanchfield Architects. Photography by Anson Smart.

The Nesso certainly was given a higher profile when it was first seen in 2007 in the television series ‘Mad Men’. The lamp sat on top of a Saarinen tulip table in the office of advertising guru Roger Sterling, played by actor John Slattery. These curvaceous forms, both the lampand the table provided a softer silhouette to the sharper and more minimal lines of the office’s early 1960s interior.

Twentieth Century Modern owner Ken Neale, whose showroom in Sydney’s Darlinghurst has been a landmark for many decades, sees the Nesso table lamp’s importance in 20th-century design. “It’s a classic and is considerably more refined and elegant than many of the other mushroom-shaped lights that were later produced in the 1970s,” Ken says, who sees the Nesso as offering the perfect proportions for contemporary homes. “Some of the copies are quite clumsy by comparison,” he adds.

The Artemide Nesso table lamp in white.

Giancarlo Mattioli was one of those designers who seemed drawn to a broad spectrum of design fields – initially working as a portrait painter before studying architecture and urban planning in Florence. According to design historian Lucia Fontana, the Nesso table lamp, with its dimple embossed shade, “is said to have been inspired by the ‘l’ombelico di una bella donna’, Italian for the sensual shape of a beautiful woman’s bellybutton.” However, most people seeing the Nesso today would generally see the mushroom as its source of inspiration rather than the mythical Greek creature the Nesso, which features a human body and the legs of a horse.

However, irrespective of the inspiration, designers today appreciate the playfulness of the design, creating the right balance between functional and moody lighting. “Even if I didn’t need a lamp to fill a certain function, it’s just one of those designs that is a beautiful object in its own right,” Sioux adds.