Delivery: 7 to 10 business days
Pair of Sputnik brass fixtures, wall sconce or ceiling light, 5 arms each with hand-blown transparent glass onion tips. Mid-Century Italian Space Age design.
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Glass: Hand-blown transparent glass, solid onion form, warm refractive finish
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Frame: Polished brass arms, white/ivory central disc
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Set: Sold as a pair
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Sconce dimensions: Height 11¾ in (30 cm) · Width 11¾ in (30 cm) · Depth from wall 7⅞ in (20 cm)
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Tube dimensions: N/A — onion-form glass tips, one per arm
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Bulb fitting: 5 × E14 per fixture, 10 × E14 total for the pair (not included)
There are lighting designs that belong to a moment in history. And then there are designs that belong to every moment — because they captured something true about the relationship between light, form, and the human desire to reach beyond the familiar.
The Sputnik is one of those designs.
This pair — polished brass, white/ivory central disc, five radiating arms, hand-blown transparent glass onion tips — is also something rarer: a matched set, in the same finish, at the same scale, ready to be placed with the kind of deliberate symmetry that elevates a room from considered to complete.
The craft
Each of the ten glass tips — five per fixture, one at the end of every brass arm — is individually hand-blown from solid, high-quality transparent glass. The onion form is one of the oldest and most technically demanding shapes in the glassblower's repertoire: a closed, bulbous body that must be formed in a single sustained breath, with walls thick enough to refract light warmly but thin enough to remain luminous rather than opaque. In transparent glass, the refractive qualities of the material are fully exposed: there is no color to filter the light, no texture to diffuse it. What you see is the glass itself — the slight variations in wall thickness, the organic asymmetry of the hand-blown form, the way the polished brass of the arm reflects back into the glass from below. It is a level of material honesty that only hand production can achieve, and that no injection-moulded glass fitting can approximate.
The material and structure
The five arms radiate symmetrically from a central circular disc in white/ivory — a deliberate compositional anchor that gives the piece its orbital, Space Age character. The polished brass finish is warm without being heavy: it catches light actively, contributing its own luminosity to the overall effect rather than simply holding the glass in place. The dual-mount design — wall or ceiling — is engineered into the fixture itself, not achieved through aftermarket adaptation. Both configurations are structurally sound and visually intentional, which means the piece reads as designed regardless of how it is installed.
Style and spaces
The Sputnik aesthetic emerged from the collision of post-war optimism, Space Age futurism, and the Italian craft tradition's refusal to treat industrial design as an excuse for poor materials. In polished brass with transparent glass, it sits precisely at that intersection: modern in silhouette, artisanal in execution, warm in material, and cool in concept. In a classical interior — a room with cornicing, period furniture, or strong architectural detailing — the Sputnik introduces a note of wit and historical self-awareness that prevents the space from reading as purely retrospective. In a contemporary interior, it provides the mid-century anchor that gives a neutral scheme its point of reference and its depth. As a pair, the placement options multiply: symmetrically flanking a fireplace, a large mirror, or a significant artwork on the wall; or as twin ceiling fixtures in a corridor, a bedroom, or a dressing room where the matching scale and finish create a sense of designed intention across the full space. The recommendation for small warm-white E14 globe or flame bulbs is not incidental — the right bulb completes the onion glass tips visually, turning each arm into a small, self-contained glow rather than a bare point of light.
Dimensions
Each fixture measures 11¾ in (30 cm) in height and 11¾ in (30 cm) in width, with a depth from wall of 7⅞ in (20 cm). The compact footprint makes these fixtures adaptable to spaces that cannot accommodate larger Sputnik compositions — they read with authority without demanding the ceiling heights or room volumes that monumental chandeliers require. Each fixture takes 5 × E14 bulbs; the pair takes 10 in total. Small warm-white globe or flame bulbs in the 2200–2700K range are recommended for the best decorative result.
Note: As with every piece of hand-blown glass, slight variations in the form and wall thickness of individual onion tips are intrinsic to the production process — not imperfections, but the signature of hand craft. They are also what gives this pair its particular warmth: no two tips catch the light in exactly the same way, and across ten arms and two fixtures, the cumulative effect is a liveliness that manufactured glass simply cannot produce.
