Once upon a time, there was a lighting style called Mid-Century Modern.

Like all period lighting styles, its shining knights swept it to fame and glory. But Mid-Century Modern did not live happily ever after.

This is the story of what came next. Three stories, actually…

Born of 1950s Modernist idealism, Mid-Century Modern
was eventually a victim of its own success…

Just as the nation itself experienced a youth-fueled revolution
in the second half of the 1960s, so did the world of lighting…

While tired Mid-Century Modern was being infused with new emotion
and color through Mod, another style was also taking shape… 

Click on each of the chapters above to delve into a past so recent that many of the more distinguished among us still remember it clearly – usually with the intense ambivalence (or outright revulsion) that reflects a vision clouded by lack of perspective. We admit it.

However, a younger generation of fresh eyes (and a few of us older folks who have had the prescriptions for our glasses adjusted) are today seeing a very different story. From amused chuckles to gasps of astonishment and delight, enthusiastic fans of lighting from the late 1960s and 1970s are leading us to rediscover treasure amidst what many still consider trash.

In this uber-post, we’ll time-travel back to the days of hippies, glam rock and disco through the pages of mainstream American lighting companies – with no snobby name-dropping – to revisit fixture designs that many hoped would never again see the light of an Edison bulb…