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Showing posts with label Sputnik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sputnik. Show all posts

Sunday, April 26, 2015

New house: Let the transformation begin!

Furniture is ordered and should be here in six weeks or so. A decision has been made about new countertop to replace the gold and black "flipper's choice" granite, and someone will be out this week to measure. After looking at countless paint chips and putting swatches on the walls, a color has finally been selected, and a painter has been chosen after taking numerous bids. It will be a few weeks before she can start the job, so rather than just sit around waiting, we decided to start replacing light fixtures, since the ceilings don't need new paint.

First up were the simple, flat ones that we want to fade away into inconspicuousness...a couple in the kitchen, one in the entry, and one in the hall. (We had considered something a little fancier in the entry, but we decided that we didn't want it to compete with the dining room fixture.)


lowes.com

The sputnik went up today in the dining room, and the transformation was amazing. Here's the "before" fixture:




And here's what the dining room looks like now, sans gold leaves and teardrop. Picture it with white beams and white walls à la the swatch underneath the windows...and furniture.






This is the 35" sputnik I told you about in an earlier post that sells for less than $200 at Lowe's. As it comes out of the box, it combines the familiar mid-century style with trendier Edison bulbs, which will look good with my daughter's color palette of dark blues and golden yellow. Of course, the bulbs can be changed if they decide on a more traditional sputnik look. If you want a lot of bang for your buck, you can't go wrong with this fixture.

Monday, March 5, 2012

A Sputnik by any other name

Yesterday's post generated quite a few comments and email questions about the style of lights commonly known as Sputniks, so I decided a spin-off post about them might be appropriate. The generic term "Sputnik light" derives from the name of the Russian Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite ever to orbit the earth, which was launched on October 4, 1957.

Gino Sarfatti designed the Astral series for Lightolier in 1954. The collection included the Astral, the Skyrocket, the Sparkler and the Mobile. Interestingly, these lights predated the Russian launch of the Sputnik 1 by three years.

The most popular of the four were the Astral, a pendant which had 12 arms, a ball center and was 14" high, and the Skyrocket, a considerably larger flush-mounted model with a cone-shaped center and 16 arms, which measured 33" in diameter and was 9.5" high. By the time Lightolier ceased production of the Astral line in 1959, dozens of knockoffs were being sold, and copycats are still being manufactured today.

Astral by Gino Sarfatti for Lightolier
crisangsteninteriors.com
Skyrocket by Gino Sarfatti for Lightolier
1stdibs.com

I did considerable searching for images of the other two but had no success. I did, however find this photo, which was identified as a Lightolier Sputnik with 24 branches. The dimensions were listed as 39" diameter and 28" high. While similar to the smaller Astral, this model has a different ceiling mount. I have no way of knowing whether this is the Sparkler or the Mobile...or neither.

Unidentified Lightolier chandelier
shophoopers.ca
From 1000 Lights: 1878 to 1959 by Charlotte Fiell