- Design Inspo
What’s a Mushroom Lamp?
Another Seventies throwback returns to the design scene.
Roxanne Robinson
Roxanne Robinson is an award-winning Paris-based American journalist covering luxury and fashion industries with over 25 years of experience. I spent over 18 years at WWD, covering sportswear, accessories and fine jewelry. My career witnessed the shift from print media to the digital age. I gained expert knowledge of the design world, wholesale and retail markets as well as the marketing that supports them. I met endless creatives and business people who create luxury from inception to POS with the consumer. My work has appeared in Forbes.com, BoF, The Hollywood Reporter, CRFashionbook.com, The Jewelry Journal as well in-house publications and websites at Bally, Pomellato, Au Depart and Editorialist.com among others.
Ultimately Nest Casa’s favorite 1970s mushroom lamp was designed by Gabriella Crespi in 1970. Crespi, who married into the aristocratic Crespi family who owns Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily newspaper, was known for exceptional taste and modern designs of furniture, sculpture, and jewelry. She designed the iconic Fungo lamp in 1970 and continued with iterations of it until 1976. It would become one of her most notable design contributions.
Despite its previous popularity, Vico Magistretti’s 1977 Atollo lamp became the mushroom table lamp archetype. Not to mention it won a prestigious Compasso d’Oro in 1979. Its stark, geometric components – a cylinder, cone, and hemisphere – demonstrate how simple shapes can create a design icon.
