Stemlite Floor Lamp

Designer: Bill Curry, 1962
The Stemlite (1962) was the first ‘total look’ lamp, a pioneering new typology conceived by American Designer Bill Curry, which replaced the traditional base-plus-shade form with a single self-contained unit comprising interchangeable modules. His debut design, the much-emulated Stemlite, was named “most influential lamp of the year” by Industrial Design Magazine in 1965, used on the set of the original Star Trek TV series, and remained in pro- duction until 1977. Now remastered by GUBI after almost half a century, the new collection comprises two table lamps, two floor lamps and a new pendant – a simple inversion of the original design – in a contemporary yet authentic color palette. Today’s Stemlite remains true to Curry’s designs, comprising three of the original heights: two table heights, one of which was originally conceived as a floor lamp and the original floor lamp height. A second, taller floor lamp has been added and a pendant light has been engi- neered by simply flipping the original design upside-down. A counterweight has been hidden in the negative space created by the geometry of the foot of the upright lamps to meet contemporary safety requirements regarding stability and versions of the floor and pendant lights with new larger globes are also available.
The Stemlite was inspired by the strong, organic, yet slender stems that support flower heads in nature. It comprises a die-cast metal base, evocative of a tulip-stem, topped with a mouth–blown glass globe, and a simple cylinder-shaped rotary switch underneath that gently rolls between the fingers from “on” through “off”.