Orphan Work Lighting

The inventive New York–based design duo of Christian Lopez Swafford and Lauren Larson have two separate lines, one artsy and one practical: It gives them the ability to tackle almost any need, and it’s more fun to stretch themselves by making a variety of objects. Their most expressive pieces fall under their Material Lust banner.

The Material Lust pieces tend to be works that surf the line between art and design, best epitomized by the ML190011 coffee table, whose top and 12 legs are covered in sweatshirts emblazoned with POLICE — provocative and fun, though perhaps not for everyone.

The Orphan Work brand comprises the duo's more sensible items, including a chic rectangular alabaster sconce that, like all their work, has become catnip for decorators and architects like Jamie Drake, Annabelle Selldorf and Kelly Wearstler. As Swafford puts it, “The heavy hitters are starting to find us.” The designers launched their two-pronged business in 2013.

“Lauren was doing interior design for Victoria Hagan, and I was doing product design for Bill Sofield,” says Swafford, describing their previous careers. They both attended the Parsons School of Design, where they met.

Swafford grew up in Washington, D.C., and Mexico; Larson is from Oregon. “We both had moms who were painters,” says Swafford, adding that despite their maternal fine-art influence, “I think we both knew we would go into design to make a living.”

The Material Lust line features an item called ML19002 that could be described as a bench or a cocktail table. It’s crafted from steel and wood, shapely and well made but not terribly out of the ordinary. What gives it the signature Material Lust frisson is that it has a separate cover of perfectly stretched latex. Swafford and Larson refer to applying and removing this as “performing” the piece.

When the cover is on, the ML19002 can’t really be used and might more properly be considered an artwork. Explains Swafford, “We’ve been finding that it’s a lot to sell a client a piece of sculpture and say, ‘Don’t ever use this.’ They want to know it can be touched and interacted with, so when people come here, we show them how.”

References to the body seem to populate the Material Lust line — the Crepuscule floor lamp, for example, looks like a giant eyeball on tripod legs. So it’s no surprise that the late, great artist Louise Bourgeois, who plumbed psychologically complex and personal themes, is an inspiration for the pair.

Larson and Swafford showed pieces from Material Lust at the Independent art fair in New York in 2019, which marked how far they are pushing their work toward the category of fine art. Unlike many designers occupying that borderland, though, they generally don’t make multiple editions of their pieces.

The ML190011 table, with its POLICE-printed sweatshirts, has become something of a signature for the duo. It was inspired by the hoodies being sold on Canal Street not far from their loft. “We tried to make this thing anxiety inducing,” says Larson. “The Material Lust line allows us to explore the uncomfortable, critical or darker side of things. We’ve been using the word ominous.”

The Contemporary 102 dining table (2019), a beautiful slab of oak on two dowel-like legs, epitomizes the simplicity of Orphan Work’s aesthetic. “Our slogan for the brand is ‘design to complement,’ because we don’t want it to be a statement,” says Larson. “We want it to be a really timeless piece that grounds the room.”

Find Material Lust lighting, tables, case pieces and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Postmodern design was a short-lived movement that manifested itself chiefly in Italy and the United States in the early 1980s. The characteristics of vintage postmodern furniture and other postmodern objects and decor for the home included loud-patterned, usually plastic surfaces; strange proportions, vibrant colors and weird angles; and a vague-at-best relationship between form and function.

ORIGINS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

• Emerges during the 1960s; popularity explodes during the ’80s
• A reaction to prevailing conventions of modernism by mainly American architects
• Architect Robert Venturi critiques modern architecture in his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)
• Theorist Charles Jencks, who championed architecture filled with allusions and cultural references, writes The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977)
• Italian design collective the Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, meets for the first time (1980) 
• Memphis collective debuts more than 50 objects and furnishings at Salone del Milano (1981)
• Interest in style declines, minimalism gains steam

CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

• Dizzying graphic patterns and an emphasis on loud, off-the-wall colors
• Use of plastic and laminates, glass, metal and marble; lacquered and painted wood 
• Unconventional proportions and abundant ornamentation
• Playful nods to Art Deco and Pop art

POSTMODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW

• Ettore Sottsass
• Robert Venturi
• Alessandro Mendini
• Michele de Lucchi
• Michael Graves
• Nathalie du Pasquier

VINTAGE POSTMODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

Critics derided postmodern design as a grandstanding bid for attention and nothing of consequence. Decades later, the fact that postmodernism still has the power to provoke thoughts, along with other reactions, proves they were not entirely correct.

Postmodern design began as an architectural critique. Starting in the 1960s, a small cadre of mainly American architects began to argue that modernism, once high-minded and even noble in its goals, had become stale, stagnant and blandly corporate. Later, in Milan, a cohort of creators led by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini — a onetime mentor to Sottsass and a key figure in the Italian Radical movement — brought the discussion to bear on design.

Sottsass, an industrial designer, philosopher and provocateur, gathered a core group of young designers into a collective in 1980 they called Memphis. Members of the Memphis Group,  which would come to include Martine Bedin, Michael Graves, Marco Zanini, Shiro Kuramata, Michele de Lucchi and Matteo Thun, saw design as a means of communication, and they wanted it to shout. That it did: The first Memphis collection appeared in 1981 in Milan and broke all the modernist taboos, embracing irony, kitsch, wild ornamentation and bad taste.

Memphis works remain icons of postmodernism: the Sottsass Casablanca bookcase, with its leopard-print plastic veneer; de Lucchi’s First chair, which has been described as having the look of an electronics component; Martine Bedin’s Super lamp: a pull-toy puppy on a power-cord leash. Even though it preceded the Memphis Group’s formal launch, Sottsass’s iconic Ultrafragola mirror — in its conspicuously curved plastic shell with radical pops of pink neon — proves striking in any space and embodies many of the collective’s postmodern ideals. 

After the initial Memphis show caused an uproar, the postmodern movement within furniture and interior design quickly took off in America. (Memphis fell out of fashion when the Reagan era gave way to cool 1990’s minimalism.) The architect Robert Venturi had by then already begun a series of plywood chairs for Knoll Inc., with beefy, exaggerated silhouettes of traditional styles such as Queen Anne and Chippendale. In 1982, the new firm Swid Powell enlisted a group of top American architects, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Stanley Tigerman and Venturi to create postmodern tableware in silver, ceramic and glass.

On 1stDibs, the vintage postmodern furniture collection includes chairs, coffee tables, sofas, decorative objects, table lamps and more.

The right table lamp, outwardly sculptural chandelier or understated wall pendant can work wonders for your home. While we’re indebted to thinkers like Thomas Edison for critically important advancements in lighting and electricity, we’re still finding new ways to customize illumination to fit our personal spaces all these years later. A wide range of antique and vintage lighting can be found on 1stDibs.

Today, lighting designers like the self-taught Bec Brittain have used the flexible structure of LEDs to craft glamorous solutions by working with what is typically considered a harsh lighting source. By integrating glass and mirrors, reflection can be used to soften the glow from LEDs and warmly welcome light into any space.

Although contemporary innovators continue to impress, some of the classics can’t be beat. 

Just as gazing at the stars allows you to glimpse the universe’s past, vintage chandeliers like those designed by Gino Sarfatti and J. & L. Lobmeyr, for example, put on a similarly stunning show, each with a rich story to tell.

As dazzling as it is, the Arco lamp, on the other hand, prioritizes functionality — it’s wholly mobile, no drilling required. Designed in 1962 by architect-product designers Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, the piece takes the traditional form of a streetlamp and creates an elegant, arching floor fixture for at-home use.

There is no shortage of modernist lighting similarly prized by collectors and casual enthusiasts alike — there are Art Deco table lamps created in a universally appreciated style, the Tripod floor lamp by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Greta Magnusson Grossman's sleek and minimalist Grasshopper lamps and, of course, the wealth of mid-century experimental lighting that emerged from Italian artisans at Arredoluce, FLOS and many more are hallmarks in illumination innovation. 

With decades of design evolution behind it, home lighting is no longer just practical. Crystalline shaping by designers like Gabriel Scott turns every lighting apparatus into a luxury accessory. A new installation doesn’t merely showcase a space; carefully chosen ceiling lights, table lamps and floor lamps can create a mood, spotlight a favorite piece or highlight your unique personality.

The sparkle that your space has been missing is waiting for you amid the growing collection of antique, vintage and contemporary lighting for sale on 1stDibs.