VeArt Globe Table Lamp Cypraea

Materials: Round brown painted metal base with air-holes. Brass plated metal ring on top. Huge opal frosted hand blown Murano glass globe lampshade with brown and powder gold spots. Some metal parts and screws. White painted Bakelite E27 socket.

Height: 47 cm / 18.50”

Globe: ∅ 45 cm / 17.71”

Base: ∅ 18 cm / 7.08”

Electricity: 1 bulb E27, 1 x 100 watt maximum, 110/220 volt.
Anytypeof light bulb canbeused, but a frosted one is preferred. 

Period: 1970s – Mid-Century Modern.

Designer: To be appraised.

Manufacturer: VeArt, Via Moglianese, 30037, Scorzè, Venice, Italy.

Other versions: This VeArt globe table lamp comes in a few sizes. This one is the biggest, model VT262. The others are 35 cm / 13.77” and 25 cm / 9.84”. It is named Cypraea. The lamp base comes in several designs and colours. Made in burnished metal and brown lacquered metal, such as this one.

This lamp base was also used for the Lata table lamp, another globe lamp. The bizarre thing about this Cypraea table lamp is that you always come across it with this brown and brass bottom, but never with the one in the catalogue photo. You find that base with other lamps. Did they change their minds at the last minute? Strange things have happened at VeArt before, like certain lamps in a catalogue being stamped with “Annulato” (cancelled). Printing a new catalogue is expensive, but it’s just individual pages in a cover, so only that page had to be reprinted. It’s a terrible job to start stamping in so many catalogues… This lamp may of course be listed with this base in other catalogues.

The spot technique was used for several other lamps. The best-known example is a cube-shaped lamp with a handle, named Pointer. There is also a bell-jar model (Dalmata) and several other designs, including animal-shaped lamps. They were all made in a similar brown-and-gold spotted glass or entirely in opal frosted glass. The spot pattern is very similar to that of the Pointer lamp designed by Giorgio de Ferrari, so he may have been the designer, but this is not mentioned in the catalogue.

Giorgio de Ferrari

Giorgio de Ferrari, born 1931, is an Italian designer and architect. Among others, he designed furniture for Elco and several lamps for Stilnovo and VeArt. He was also teacher at the Politecnico di Torino, the Polytechnic University of Turin. 

VeArt 

VeArt, first written as Ve-Art was founded in 1965 by Sergio Biliotti and Ludovico Diaz de Santillana. Ludovico Diaz de Santillana was born in Rome in 1931.  He graduated in architecture in Venice and he started teaching at the university. He married Anna Venini, the daughter of Paolo, the founder of the Venini glass company.

Ludovico Diaz de Santillana became the artistic director of Venini in 1985, after Paolo ‘s death. He died in 1989.

The VeArt company produced artistic glass and lighting. Mario Ticco was artistic director for a while. In the early 90s the brand was acquired by Artemide. The Artemide company used the brand’s name for a couple of years.

Designers that worked for VeArt are, among others: Tobia Scarpa, Renato Toso, Noti Massari, Toni Zuccheri, Paolo Zanotta, Ernesto Gismondi = Orni Halloween, Umberto Riva, Alfredo Giuseppe Righetto, Lino Tagliapietra, Roberto Freno, Luciano Bartolini, Adolf Loos, Luisa Calvi, Giorgio de Ferrari, Gigi Basso, Luigi Ghisetti, Umberto Riva, Sergio Asti, and Guido Rosati.

VeArt also sold lamps under the name VeLuce. They appear together in the same catalogues. The VeLuce lamps doon’t have names in the catalogues, only numbers. VeArt was the more fancy of the two. But the designs of VeLuce are certainly not inferior to those of VeArt.