Welcome to Style Detective, a series from T Magazine. Each month, we’ll investigate readers’ questions regarding the items and objects they can’t stop thinking about — and can’t track down. Subscribe here and click this link to submit your own questions.
 | By Tom Delavan Tom Delavan is the design and interiors director of T Magazine. |
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“I’m trying to identify a lamp that my parents gave me between 1980 and 1984, when we were living in Japan. Unfortunately, I have very little information about it. The base was made of wood, and the upper part — which included a cylindrical element and a triangular lampshade — was metal. It also had a dimmer switch. Any help you could provide identifying this model or its manufacturer would be greatly appreciated.” — Anne-Sophie, Paris
I love that you’re looking for it after all these years. With its juxtaposition of colors and geometric shapes, it could have come from the Memphis Group, that collective of 1980s mostly Italian designers who rejected minimalism for a more boisterous style. It especially reminds me of some of Michele De Lucchi’s early work, such as Sinerpica (1979), or a pared-down version of Ettore Sottsass’s Tahiti lamp (1981). But because you were in Japan, it’s more likely that yours was a postmodern lamp by a Japanese designer who was influenced by Memphis. Nick Haramis, the editor of this piece, found a 2014 post about the lamp on Sight Unseen with the caption, “Patrick Parrish of Mondoblogo officially wins at eBay.” I reached out to Parrish, an art and design dealer in New York, who didn’t have any additional information about the lamp, which he’s since sold, but he did confirm that a label on the underside of the base said “Made in Japan.”
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| Left: a version of the reader’s mysterious lamp. Right: Ettore Sottsass’s 1981 Tahiti lamp from the Memphis design collective's collection. From left: via Instagram @mondoblogo; courtesy of Memphis Milano |
I figured it must have come from Yamagiwa, a Tokyo lighting company that produced its own interpretations of Memphis pieces. But a representative for Yamagiwa, which now focuses on more subdued forms, shot down that theory. “I’ve checked internally and, based on the information we currently have, it does not appear that the lamp was produced by our company,” she wrote in an email.
It’s likely that whoever made your lamp is no longer in business; in recent years, Japanese lighting has largely embraced minimalism. But if you’re after ’80s ebullience, look to the source: Memphis still makes a number of pieces from that era, including Sottsass’s Tahiti, Ashoka (1981) and Bay (1983), and De Lucchi’s Oceanic lamp (1981). For something a bit less recognizably Memphis, it also sells Piccadilly, a lamp by the late Scottish designer Gerard Taylor, who once worked for Sottsass, and lamps by George Sowden, another original member of the group, whose company sells work under his own brand with a similar combination of colors.
