We’ve all been there. A deadline is holding its gun against our sweating neck like a sharp-suited swag straight out of a Raymond Chandler novella. We hang our head, brew another cuppa and brace ourselves for a long, solitary night, occasionally looking up to see whether there is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, there is a light. It’s our old, faithful desk lamp. As companion and bearer of light, it has a starring role in our late-night dramas. Yet it sits there humbly, humming away in its own tepidly-glowing little bubble.
And that perfectly suits the desk lamp’s humble origins. When British designer George Carwardine added suspension mechanisms to a desk lamp – tweaking the springs and pivoting arms to provide balance, and thus eliminating the need for counterweights – his main aim was to provide better lighting on the production floor of the car factory where he worked at the time.
Despite not being business-minded, Carwardine had the good sense to patent his design. It was the right decision because when Herbert Terry & Sons, who supplied Carwardine with springs, saw the inventor’s lamp, they convinced him to sign a licensing arrangement so that they could produce and sell what they eventually named as the Anglepoise lamp.
The lamp was soon on the international radar. In 1936, Jac Jacobsen, a Norwegian textiles machinery importer, contacted Herbert Terry & Sons to acquire the licensing rights for Norway. He had bought a couple and found that the lamp’s adjustable arm was ideal for sewing. The British company agreed, only on one condition – that Jacobsen would kick the deal off by buying parts for 500 of the lamps. Cue handshake.
When Jacobsen started manufacturing his own Anglepoise lamps for Norway, he tweaked the design and renamed it the Luxo lamp. He eventually negotiated with Herbert Terry & Sons to acquire the rights to sell his lamp outside Commonwealth territories. To date, the Luxo Company has sold more than 25 million Luxo lamps.
He had bought a couple and found that the lamp’s adjustable arm was ideal for sewing
Seeing their sales dwindling to just 50,000 a year, in the early 2000s Herbert Terry & Sons brought in industrial designer Kenneth Grange to revamp the Anglepoise lamp. The modern Anglepoise Type 3 was an instant success.
More than eight decades after Carwardine had his light bulb moment, you can still walk into any interiors store and find the Anglepoise lamp or one of its variants. So before you switch it off and go to bed, spare a thought for this design classic.