"Helice" Aluminum Floor Lamp by Marc Newson Produced by Flos, Italy, ca. 1993

With his sleek, glossy and dynamic designs, Marc Newson creates cutting-edge work that embodies notions of speed, luxury and progress. His work — be it his now-iconic Event Horizon table, an Italian speed boat, Nike shoes, or an Ikepod wristwatch — manifests a jet-set lifestyle redefined for the 21st century.

A Sydney native, Newson lived in Tokyo for several years and currently resides in London. He has created everything from furniture and jewelry to sneakers and dish racks. Given his globetrotting lifestyle, it’s easy to see why one of his best-known designs is the Lockheed lounge chair — a curvy, pod-shaped piece crafted from the same riveted aluminum that encases airplanes. You may also have spotted one of Newson’s many collaborations with luxury fashion houses — such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès — in a first-class departure lounge.

One of the most influential (and certainly one of the most prolific) industrial designers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Newson preaches the gospel of good design with messianic fervor. His work appears in dozens of museum collections around the world, and consistently fetches high prices at auction.

Newson has long been captivated by the space-age modernism of the early 1960s — indeed, his famed Embryo chair for Cappellini would fit right into the Jetsons’ living room. With such a long and impressive list of futuristic design bona fides, as you will see on these pages, Marc Newson is clearly a designer on the move.

Find vintage Marc Newson lounge chairs, tables and other furniture today on 1stDibs.

Imaginative lighting is a longtime hallmark of modern Italian design. Following in the footsteps of innovative companies such as Artemide and Arteluce, the company FLOS brought a fresh aesthetic philosophy to the Italian lighting field in the 1960s, one that would produce several of the iconic floor lamp, table lamp and pendant light designs of the era.

FLOS — Latin for “flower” — was founded in the northern town of Merano in 1962 by Cesare Cassina (of the famed Cassina furniture-making family) and Dino Gavina, a highly cultured businessman who believed that artistic ideas espoused in postwar Italy could inform commercial design. The two enlisted brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni as their first designers.

Even before FLOS was formally incorporated, the Castiglionis gave the firm one of its enduring successes with the Taraxacum pendant and associated designs made by spraying an elastic polymer on a metal armature. (George Nelson had pioneered the technique in the United States in the early 1950s.) For other designs, the brothers found inspiration in everyday objects. Suggestive of streetlights, their Arco floor lamp, with its chrome boom and ball-shaped shade sweeping out from a marble block base, has become a staple of modernist decors. Designing for FLOS since 1966, Tobia Scarpa has also been inspired by the commonplace. His folded-metal Foglio sconces resemble a shirt cuff; his carved marble Biagio table lamp looks like a jai alai basket.

In 1973, FLOS purchased Arteluce, the company founded in 1939 by Gino Sarfatti, and it continues to produce his designs. In recent decades, FLOS has contracted work from several noted designers, including Marcel Wanders and Jasper Morrison. As instantly recognizable as they are, many FLOS designs remain accessible. While FLOS lighting is the essence of modernity, its sleek, subtle designs can be used to strike a sculptural note in even traditional spaces.

Browse a broad range of FLOS lighting fixtures at 1stDibs.