Alison Berger Lighting

The success of Holly Hunt — both the designer and her eponymous empire of textile and furnishings showrooms — is based on instinct.

The Chicago-based Hunt trusts her own tastes, reflected in her signature lines of elegant, low-key furniture, lighting and fabrics. She also trusts her judgment about the wants of the buying public, and this savvy sensibility has allowed her to cultivate and market the work of a range of contemporary talents, from minimalists like Christian Liaigre to eccentrics like Christian Astuguevieille.

Hunt is a design world impresario — a prominent arbiter for stylish modern interiors and known foremost for fabrics, seating designs and light fixtures. Modern sophistication, attention to detail, and a desire to cultivate talented contemporary designers are at the crux of the company’s success.

Born in central Texas to schoolteacher parents, Hunt was a creative girl who made her own clothes and bickered with her mother about decor. After graduating from Texas Tech, Hunt worked as department-store buyer and costume jewelry designer before marrying and helping her husband build a multimillion dollar transport company. Her hobby was decorating their homes. After the two divorced, Hunt purchased a showroom in the Chicago Merchandise Mart in 1983. Within 10 years, she was winning applause for her understated designs, her lavish showroom parties and her eye for rising design stars. Liaigre was her first discovery. Correctly surmising that his pared-down furniture in dark wood would play well in the United States in the aftermath of the go-go ’80s, Hunt began marketing the French designer’s work in 1994.

Over the subsequent years Hunt has added a half-dozen showrooms and, following her own style barometer, has taken on other fresh talents, including glassmaker Alison Berger, French designer Christophe Pillet and couturier Ralph Rucci, making a foray into home design.

One constant over that time have been the aesthetics of Hunt’s own designs. Her fabrics — the first choice of many dealers when re-upholstering vintage seating — are understated, mixing muted colors and updates of classic patterns. Her furniture is simple and refined. As you will see on 1stDibs, the name Holly Hunt represents a sense of timelessness and sophistication.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

From the kitchen to the bedroom and everywhere in between, there is one major part of home decor that you definitely want to master: lighting. Carefully selected vintage sconces and wall lights can do wonders in establishing mood and highlighting your distinctive personality.

We’re a long way from the candelabra-inspired chandeliers of the medieval era. Lighting is no longer merely practical, and lighting designers have been creating and reinventing lighting solutions for eons. Because of the advancements crafted by these venturesome makers, we now have the opportunity to bring unique, customizable lighting solutions into our homes.

It’s never been easier to create dramatic bedrooms, cozy kitchen areas and cheerful bars than it is today. Think of an elegant wall sconce as functional and as a work of art, adding both light and style to your hallways, whimsical kids’ rooms and elsewhere.

When choosing a lighting solution, first determine what your needs are: Will you opt for a moody or a bright feel? The room that will serve as your home office will need adequate lighting — think “the brighter, the better” for this particular setting.

For the bedroom, bedside wall lamps with warm-temperature bulbs instead of bedside table lamps could be the way to go to induce a sense of calm or intimacy. Try to match the style of the wall light or sconce that you’re installing to the overall design scheme of your room. It’s never “just a light.” You should approach the lighting of a room with a mindset that is one part practical and one part aesthetics-driven.

Let 1stDibs help you set the mood with the right antique and vintage wall lights and sconces for your home. Our collection includes every kind of fixture, from sculptural works by Austrian craftsman J.T. Kalmar to chic industrial-style wall sconces, from adjustable painted aluminum wall lamps designed by Artemide to a wide variety of minimalist mid-century modern masterpieces.