Our Favourite Artemide Designer Table Lamps for Use in Workspace

The Artemide brand  is known for its range of innovative light fittings, which are designed first from experience rather than to a brief.

We'd like to highlight two of our favourite Artemide lights today.

Designer Table Lamps for Workspace

Although they look much the same as most table lamps, these two lights are very much intended for use in the workspace.

Primarily functional, the Tizio and Tolomeo desk lamps derive their modern-classic looks from their purpose: they are feats of engineering as well as of design.

The Artemide Tizio desk lamp was designed in 1972 by the technically innovative Richard Sapper and was selected for the very prestigious Compasso D'Oro industrial design award later, in 1979.

There are a number of features that make the Tizio as unique now as it was in the 1970s:

• the transformer in the base that supplies electricity not through wires but conducted through the parallel bars;
• the counterweight design that represented a shift from the clunky springs of previous designs.

It was also the first popular household item to utilise a halogen lamp, which had been used almost exclusively in the automotive industry until then. It's easy to see why the Museum of Modern Art has a Tizio on display: its design and function are one and the same.

Inspired by the Tizio lamp, Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina collaborated on the Tolomeo lamp in 1986 - which won the Compasso D'Oro a few years later in 1989.

Fans of Smallville might recognise this item from Lex Luthor's mansion and a few other places.

The Tolomeo has long been Hollywood's icon for taste and decorum (but not for evil).

This table light looks instantly familiar because more recent designs owe a lot to the Tolomeo's incredibly flexible design!

For example, in the mid-eighties, the original design of the arm extension and 360° head rotation were a radical departure from other lamps.

Both of these classic items are available in our online store if you would like to bring a little bit of design history into your workspace - see the full range of Artemide Tolomeo and Artemide Tizio lamps.

Note: these light fittings may no longer be available on our website; see the full range of the Artemide table lamps available, and see the other LED table lamps on our website.