Floorlamp CHIARA, designed by Mario Bellini. Italy, FLOS, 1969.

Large floorlamp from one metal sheet with plastic edging and shaped around a metal base with the light source attached. Lightbulb dimmable. Simply beautiful.

Literature: Repertorio del Design Italiano 1950-2000, p. 139, illustrated.

In 1969, Italian architect Mario Bellini debuted Chiara, a flat-packable floor lamp for Flos that wore a shiny cloak of stainless steel. "I took some scissors, a big piece of card, and I started to cut out something that could be made into a cylinder with a wide hat on top that, when joined on the right and left-hand side, would act as a reflector of the light source housed in the base."(Mario Bellini).

Mario Bellini is one of the most distinguished Italian designers of industrial and domestic products. Always inventive and highly versatile, his design solutions are characterized by a sophisticated sense of form and proportion, a classical restraint, an innate respect for the properties of the materials used and a commitment to practicality. His Chiara floor light (1964) for Flos effectively sculpts a single, flat sheet of steel into a column and diffusing hood.