Arteluce Tango Desk Lamp

Materials: Round black-grey, anthracite, cast iron base. Plastic and rubber rods, tubes, metal inside. Elongated round Lampshade. Aluminium reflector. Porcelain G4 socket. Flexible revolving light, rotatable in all possible directions.

Lampshade: 21 x 10 cm / 8.26 x 3.93”

Max Height: 110 cm / 43.30”

Base: ∅ 24 cm / 9.44”

Electricity: 1 bulb G4 Halogen, 1 x 50 watt maximum, 12 volt/220 volt.
Any type of light bulb can be used, not a specific one preferred.

Period: 1980s, 1990s.

Designer: Stephan Copeland in 1989.

Manufacturer: Arteluce, Milan, Italy.

Other versions: The Arteluce Tango desk lamp exists with a blue lampshade and was made in grey and grey with white. These lamps have an external transformer that produces both 6 and 12 volts. The switch can thus be set to 3 positions. Low, high and off. It appears in FLOS catalogues until at least 1999.

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.”

Gino Sarfatti – Arteluce

Gino Sarfatti was born in Venice, Italy, 16th September 1912 and studied aero naval engineering at the University of Genoa. He founded his company Arteluce in February 1939 and sold it to FLOS in late 1973. Sarfatti retired and decided to live in his house in Griante on Lake Como.

Gino Sarfatti designed nearly 700 lamps for his company and was awarded numerous times for his designs, including the ‘Compasso d’Oro‘ in 1954. His first designs were created before he found his firm, between 1937 and 1939. Sarfatti passed away, 6 March 1985 in Gravedona, Como, Italy.

Today FLOS still produces his famous chandelier model 2097 from 1957 with 18, 30 and 50 light bulbs.

Designers that worked for Arteluce are, among others: Franco Albini, Cini Boeri, Franca Helg, Antonio Macchi Cassia, Carlo Mollino, Vittorio Gregotti, Lodovico Meneghetti, Giotto Stoppino, Ico Parisi, and Massimo Vignelli.

FLOS

FLOS was founded in 1960. The company was born as a small workshop in Merano, where new materials were experimented, and new stylistic and functional researches, when Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina collaborated with an important importer of an innovative polymeric coating (Cocoon) produced in the United States: Arturo Eisenkeil. The Eisenkeil company is still located in Merano (or Meran), South-Tirol, Italy.

The seventies were years of great creative and entrepreneurial ferment. The company rapidly grows and opens its first subsidiary in Germany. In 1974 FLOS acquires Arteluce, the company founded by Gino Sarfatti. As result, several models designed by Gino Sarfatti have been incorporated into the range of FLOS products.

In the nineties, FLOS decided to create its own spin-off called Light Contract, a division specialised in the production of professional products and lighting systems for large commercial spaces. Nowadays FLOS is still one of the leading companies in its sector.