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Harvey Guzzini Cabras Pendant Lamp – 1960s Meblo Catalogue Picture
Os you can see in this catalogue picture, Meblo named it Iva. Meblo often changed the name of the Harvey Guzzini lamps. The reason is unclear. The other models in this catalogue picture, the Faro and Elvetia pendant lamps kept their original name.
Harvey Guzzini Cabras Pendant Lamp – Design: Luigi Massoni
Luigi Massoni
Luigi Massoni was born in Milan, Italy, on 22 January 1930. He was an architect, industrial designer, publisher and editor. He trained at the Collettivo di Architettura in Milan and gained his first professional experience between 1953 and 1955. From the 1960s onwards he divided his time between Milan and the Marche region; he later settled in Recanati, where he died in 2013.
In the mid-1950s he began working for Alessi, where he created his famous bar set. In 1957 he designed, together with Carlo Mazzeri, the well-known cocktail shaker and shortly afterwards the Serie 5 containers, which are still in production today.
Il Mobile Italiano & Mobilia
Together with architect Carlo De Carli, Massoni helped to renew Italian furniture design in the late 1950s. Between 1957 and 1960 they founded and edited the magazine “Il Mobile Italiano”, one of the early platforms devoted to modern Italian furniture. In 1959 Massoni brought together a group of furniture manufacturers to create Mobilia, one of the first centres dedicated to the promotion of Italian design.
Boffi Cucine
Also in 1959 he began working for Boffi Cucine as a designer and production coordinator, developing some of the first modular systems for the home and kitchen. For Boffi he created the Dogu kitchen and bathroom, the Xila kitchen and bathroom, the Punto bathroom, the E15 kitchen, the AL15 kitchen and the A1 cupboard, designs that are now considered milestones in Italian kitchen design.
Publishing and communication
Massoni was deeply involved in design communication. He was editor and director of the magazine “Marmo Tecnica Architettura” from 1956 to 1963 and later of “Forme” from 1962 onwards. Through these publications he played an important role in connecting designers, craftsmen and industry, and in promoting a modern culture of industrial and craft-based production in Italy. His works were widely published in major Italian and international magazines and received numerous prizes and acknowledgements.
Guzzini group and other companies
From the early 1960s Massoni began a long collaboration with the Guzzini group. He worked for Fratelli Guzzini and Harvey Guzzini (later iGuzzini) as product and graphic designer, art director and consultant for corporate image and communication, designing numerous lamps and household objects and even the Harvey / DH logo.
Over the course of his career he also designed for a wide range of other Italian companies, including: Poltrona Frau (furniture, e.g. Dilly Dally coiffeuse and beds), Mobilia (furniture such as the Clessidra dining table), Nazareno Gabrielli (leather goods), Gallotti & Radice (glass tables and furniture), Palini (school furniture), Cedit and Gabbianelli (ceramic tiles and objects), Sirrah (lighting), Venini (glass).
In later years he also collaborated, often through the studio 967 Architetti Associati, with brands such as Poltrona Frau, Fratelli Guzzini and Upper.
Harvey Guzzini
In 1962, Luigi Massoni meets the brothers Raimondo, Giovanni and Giuseppe Guzzini in Milan: it is the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. He worked for Fratelli Guzzini and Harvey Guzzini, whatlater changed in iGuzzini, until 1976. Not only he was the art director but the coordinator of communication and advertising campaign, bringing, as pointed out by Adolfo Guzzini “a purification of the form ” and “rationality as a new social status “. He also designed the logo of Harvey Guzzini as you can see on this page.
Luigi Massoni designed some of the most beautiful lamps for Harvey Guzzini, such as the Brumbry, the Alvise, the Moana, the Toledo, the Medusa, and many others.
Meblo and Sijaj Hrastnik
Outside Italy, Harvey Guzzini lamps were sometimes distributed under local brand names. In former Yugoslavia they were first sold by the Slovenian company Sijaj Hrastnik and later produced and marketed by Meblo.
Meblo grew out of a furniture factory founded in Gorizia in 1948. The company initially produced high-quality wooden and upholstered furniture, and from the 1960s onwards added lighting and a wide range of plastic household products. In cooperation with Harvey Guzzini, Meblo manufactured and sold many Italian designs under its own label – hence the familiar “Meblo – Guzzini” markings on some lamps.
Sijaj Hrastnik, another Slovenian manufacturer, also sold Harvey Guzzini models in Yugoslavia before Meblo took over this role. Today the successor company MebloJOGI specialises in mattresses rather than lighting.
Lamps In The Movies
Bronx (2020)
A Harvey Guzzini Cabras pendant lamp was used as a set decoration in the 2020French action film Bronx (Rogue City). Starring: Lannick Gautry, Stanislas Merhar and Kaaris. It is a white version without the rise & fall mechanism.
Links (external links open in a new window)
Harvey Guzzini Cabras Pendant Lamp
Materials: Round orange acrylic mushroom lampshade, white on the inside. Chrome rod and ball. Some chrome and metal parts. Chrome canopy. 3 Bakelite sockets.
Cord: This one has an adjustable rise & fall mechanism (55-120 cm / 21.65-47.24″). It can be easily adjusted in height by pulling the chrome ball underneath.
Height: 25 cm / 9.84”
Width: ∅ 45 cm / 12.59”
Electricity: 3 bulbs E14, 3 x 60 watt maximum, 110/220 volt.
Any type of light bulb can be used, not a specific one preferred. But white or frosted bulbs gives the most beautiful result.
Period: 1960s, 1970s – Mid-Century Modern.
Designer: Luigi Massoni (1930 – 2013).
Manufacturer:Harvey Guzzini, Recanati, Italy, today named iGuzzini.
Other versions: This Harvey Guzzini Cabras pendant lamp is made in several colours: white, brown, orange and yellow, according to the catalogue of 1974. Model number: 3020. Lamps with different handles were also produced.
The Cabras was also made without the handle, and without the rise & fall mechanism, as you can see in the movie. The Cabras pendant lamp uses the same lampshade as the Toledo table lamp. You can find it over here. A pendant lamp with a ribbed lampshade was made in the 70s. It is model 3086.
Cabras is a commune in Sardinia.
The lampshade of the Harvey Guzzini Cabras pendant lamp is slightly degrading orange (light to dark orange) on the outside, complete white on the inside. Harvey Guzzini wanted to create the incamiciato effect, the same way many Murano glass lamps are made. It is made this way to give white light below and to distribute the light evenly.
Prototypes were made from 1965 until 1973.
The Cabras was named Iva by MEBLO.
Acrylic: Often named by its commercial name: Perspex, Plexiglas, Crylux, Acrylite, Lucite, is a thermoplastic.
Incamiciato: Overlay lattimo glass (= milky looking glass) with a layer of transparent coloured glass.
Harvey Guzzini / iGuzzini illuminazione
In the late 1950s the Guzzini family from Recanati (Marche, Italy) set up a small workshop for enamelled copper objects. On 30 June 1959 the brothers Raimondo, Giovanni, Virgilio, Giuseppe and Giannunzio Guzzini, sons of Mariano Guzzini, officially founded Harvey Creazioni for the production of decorative copperware. The name “Harvey” was inspired by the 1950 film Harvey with James Stewart and his imaginary rabbit friend.
Very soon the company moved from the ground floor of the family home in Recanati to a new factory in nearby Le Grazie, where the first lamps were developed. Early lighting models were designed by external designers such as Karl Roters and Charles F. Joosten (Josteen), who had already worked for Fratelli Guzzini on plastic tableware.
In the early 1960s Harvey became a true family business when more brothers joined, and in 1962 industrial designer Luigi Massoni was brought in to lead the design team. Massoni worked for both Fratelli Guzzini and Harvey Guzzini until the mid-1970s and played a key role in the transition from enamelled copper to moulded plastics such as polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). Under his direction the company developed many of the iconic “space age” domestic lamps that defined the brand.
During the 1960s and 1970s Harvey Guzzini became one of the standard-bearers of Italian mid-century lighting design. The in-house design office, often referred to as Studio 6G or Ufficio Progetti, and external designers created a long series of acrylic pendant, table and floor lamps that combined coloured domes, chrome details and multi-light switching. These domestic lamps were distributed widely in Europe and beyond, for example through Habitat in the UK.
Design House
In the late 1960s Harvey Guzzini also introduced the Design House (DH) label for a more explicitly “design-led” range. Under this name, the company presented its products at international exhibitions and in dedicated Design House catalogues. Lamps shown in one of these catalogues include Alicante, Noppo, Ibis, Azalea, Cigno, Moon, Selene, Poliedra, Focus, Tam Tam, Squared, Taw, Cespuglio, Nastro, Moana, Nitia, Lampione, Lucciola, Piuma and Diaframma. In 1969, Harvey Guzzini also opened a Harvey Guzzini – DH store in central Milan, underlining the more design-oriented positioning of this range.
Harveiluce
Around the same period, the Harveiluce name appeared on several models, sometimes alongside or later replaced by Harvey Guzzini or iGuzzini labels. Harveiluce was thus used only for a relatively short time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, mainly as another trade name for the same family of designs that would later be marketed under the iGuzzini brand.
DOMA
In the 1970s iGuzzini also used the Doma name for a line of plastic furniture and accessories. The Doma collection included space age storage trolleys, coat racks, chairs, ashtrays and decorative spheres, often in injection-moulded ABS with metal details, designed by Luigi Massoni, Dino Pelizza, Fabio Lenci and others. These pieces were marketed under the same corporate umbrella as Harvey Guzzini and iGuzzini lighting, and the iGuzzini logo introduced in 1974 covered products sold under sub-brands such as DH, Doma and Atelier.
iGuzzini
In 1974 the company name was changed from Harvey Guzzini to iGuzzini, and in 1981 to iGuzzini illuminazione. From the mid-1970s onwards the firm progressively shifted its focus from domestic “space age” lighting to architectural and technical lighting for public and professional spaces. Today iGuzzini is an international lighting group based in Recanati, known for collaborations with architects and designers such as Gae Aulenti, Gio Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto, Piero Castiglioni and many others, and since 2019 it has been part of the Swedish Fagerhult Group.
In 2022–2023 iGuzzini launched the iGuzzini Echoes programme: a series of re-editions of classic 1960s–1970s designs, updated with LED technology and recycled / recyclable materials. The first models to return were Polsino (Gio Ponti, re-edition 2022) and Zurigo (Luigi Massoni, re-edition 2022), followed by Nitia (Rodolfo Bonetto, re-edition 2023), Clan (Flash, Bud, Clan) and Sorella (all credited to the historic Harvey / Harveiluce design team, re-edition 2023).
Although the brand identity and product range have evolved towards professional lighting, the vintage Harvey Guzzini domestic lamps from the 1960s and 1970s – as well as the recent Echoes re-editions – remain an important chapter in the history of Italian plastic design.
Designers
Designers who worked for the company include: Luigi Massoni, Luciano Buttura, Sergio Brazzoli, Ermanno Lampa, Giuseppe Cormio, Emilio Fabio Simion, Karl Roters, Charles F. Joosten, Fabio Lenci, Bruno Gecchelin, Gio Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto, Gae Aulenti, Piero Castiglioni, Carlo Bimbi, Nilo Gioacchini, Antonella Ducci Valera, Carlo Urbinati, Felice Ragazzo, Ennio Lucini, Cesare Casati, Gianfranco Frattini, Ambrogio Pozzi, Francesco Piccaluga, Aldo Piccaluga, Makio Hasuike, Renzo Piano, Dean Skira, Maurici Ginés, Artec Studio, Enzo Eusebi, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Arup, Norman Foster, Mario Cucinella, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Massimiliano e Doriana Fuksas, Jean-Marie Duthilleul, Roberto Pamio, Paul Andreau, Laura Maria Mandelli, Giuseppe De Goetzen, Franco Bresciani, Studio D.A.
Harvey Guzzini Cabras Pendant Lamp
1960s Harvey Guzzini Meblo Zagreb Lighting Fair
A photo of a lighting fair in Zagreb, in the former Yugoslavia, in the late 1960s. The Cabras pendant lamp is displayed alongside a whole host of other Harvey Guzzini icons, including the Flash floor lamp and the Teulada, Zurigo, and Clear pendant lamps.
Logo used between 1959 and 1964. Inspired by the 1950 film “Harvey “, starring James Stewart.
Logo used between 1965 and 1977. This logo was designed by Luigi Massoni.
The architect Massoni was invited to work with Harvey as the company’s art director, a move that gave further impetus to the idea of collaborating with designers.
Between 1967 and 1971, Ennio Lucini designed the catalogue tor the DH brand, under which lamps for home lighting were marketed.
Logo used from 1974 until today, designed by Advema G&R Associati. This logo embodied the company’s entire output, which was marketed under other brands such as DH, Doma and Atelier.
It was during this period that the company began making technical products. Spot and flood lights in particular.
