Item Description
We are privileged to present one of the most elusive iterations of Ettore Sottsass’s seminal Palafitta series—Model 12639, executed in a fiery red plexiglas. Conceived during the radical fervor of the early 1960s for the visionary Milanese manufacturer Arredoluce, the Palafitta (translating to “stilt house”) represents a pivotal moment of departure. Here, Sottsass sheds the sculptural organicism of his early work for an architecture of pure geometric insistence. The design language is a taut essay in verticality and suspension. Four cylindrical brass pillars, like the structural piles of a lagoon dwelling, elevate a floating top diffuser. The source of its captivating aura? Two hidden light bulbs, which refract through the rich, translucent depths of the red plexiglass, transforming the structural frame itself into a radiant, ruby-hued column of light. While the Palafitta is celebrated in its more commonly seen yellow and white version, the saturated red and white plexiglas is exceptionally rare—an almost mythical variant that appears only fleetingly on the market. The color is not a passive surface treatment; it is an active, spatial element. When illuminated, the lamp exudes a warm, almost infrared glow, an ambient heat of the mind that perfectly encapsulates the impending Pop and Radical Design movements Sottsass would soon define with Memphis. Preserved in excellent vintage condition, the Plexiglas elements retain their luminous depth, punctuated by the crisp patina of the painted metal base and the precisely engineered brass hardware—a signature of Arredoluce’s uncompromising quality. To encounter a red Palafitta is to grasp the proto-revolutionary instinct of a master before the revolution was named. A profound acquisition for the serious collector of Italian Radical Design at its most poetic and optically seductive.
