Arteluce Tango Desk Lamp

Soon after its introduction, the Tango received significant international recognition. In the United States it was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institute of Business Designers, and it was highlighted in several design publications, including an in-depth presentation in MODO magazine and coverage in the New York Times. Reviewers praised the lamp’s anthropomorphic profile, its high level of mechanical resolution, and the playful yet functional flexibility of its shade and structure.

Stephan Copeland

Stephan Copeland was born in Montreal, Canada in 1960 from Irish parents and currently works in New York. Copeland has won several awards and been wildly published and exhibited for design innovation. He designed for FLOS, Knoll, Herman Miller, NASA and many more.

Text from his website about the lamp: “The Tango Lamp has received several international awards. With applications from the World Bank ‘s Paris headquarters to James Bond films, Tango’s fluid functionality is unique among desk lamps.”  The most likely candidate would be Licence to Kill (1989). Unfortunately I must have overlooked it, because I couldn’t find this one among my screenshots of lamps from that film, or the next film, GoldenEye (1995).

Within lighting design, Copeland is particularly associated with a series of technically sophisticated task lights in which movement is the central theme. Besides the Tango lamp for Arteluce, he developed several kinetic desk lights for major manufacturers, including the Copeland Light for Knoll and later the Amble LED task light for LightCorp. These lamps use articulated mechanisms, spring systems and gravity-balanced heads to allow light to be positioned with great freedom, shifting easily between focused and more diffuse illumination. Copeland often cites bicycles, toys and the moving human body as references for this work, and his lighting designs consistently aim to make mechanical complexity feel intuitive, playful and quietly ergonomic.

Arteluce Tango Desk Lamp – 1990 Catalogue Picture

Gino Sarfatti & Arteluce

Gino Sarfatti was born in Venice on 16 September 1912 and initially studied aero-naval engineering at the University of Genoa. He founded Arteluce in February 1939, a company that would become one of the most influential forces in Italian lighting design. Between 1937 and 1939, even before establishing the firm, Sarfatti created his first lighting models, and over the following decades he designed nearly 700 lamps. His work received numerous awards, including the Compasso d’Oro in 1954.

Arteluce quickly evolved into a reference point for modern lighting and collaborated with many of Italy’s most important designers. Among them were Franco Albini, Cini Boeri, Franca Helg, Antonio Macchi Cassia, Carlo Mollino, Vittorio Gregotti, Lodovico Meneghetti, Giotto Stoppino, Ico Parisi, and Massimo Vignelli.

In late 1973 Sarfatti sold Arteluce to FLOS and retired to his home in Griante, on Lake Como. He passed away on 6 March 1985 in Gravedona, Como. Today, several of his designs remain in production, most notably the chandelier Model 2097 from 1957, available in versions with 18, 30, or 50 bulbs.

FLOS and the continuation of ArteluceFLOS was founded in 1960 in Merano, where designers and manufacturers experimented with new materials such as Cocoon, introduced by Arturo Eisenkeil. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the company expanded rapidly, and in 1974 FLOS acquired Arteluce, integrating Sarfatti’s legacy into its own catalogue.

As a result, a number of Arteluce models—particularly those by Gino Sarfatti —continued their production lifecycle under the FLOS name. This acquisition ensured that Arteluce’s most significant designs remained available long after the original company ceased operations.

Today FLOS is still considered one of the leading lighting manufacturers, and the incorporation of Arteluce’s heritage remains an important chapter in its history. Since about the beginning of the century, the name Arteluce has no longer been used by FLOS, and the remaining models are now marketed solely under the FLOS brand.

Arteluce Tango Desk Lamp – 1993 Catalogue Picture