Lot 198
TROUGHTON & YOUNG
TABLE LAMP, c.1955
Auction: 30 October from 10:00 GMT
Description
yellow enamelled shade, brass, painted wooden base
Dimensions
49.5cm high, 36cm wide (19 ½in high, 14 1/8in wide)
Provenance
From a Private Collection of Post-War British Lighting.
Footnote
Literature:
Larkman, Brian and S H Glenister, Contemporary Design in Metalwork, John Murray Publishing, London, 1963, p.37, for similar example.
Rayner, Geoffrey, Richard Chamberlain and Annamarie Stapleton, Austerity to Affluence: British Design 1945-1962, Merrell Publishers Ltd., London, 1997, p,102, cat. no.PD43, for a similar example.
A major supplier of lighting to the Festival of Britain, Troughton & Young flourished under the design direction of A.B. Read (1898–1973), whose work also included the Freeform range for Poole Pottery.
Read’s interest in Walter Gropius prompted a visit to the Bauhaus, where experiments in lighting design helped shape his subsequent career. Following a year with the Parisian lighting firm Baguès, he became a director of Troughton & Young (Lighting) Ltd in 1925. Ernest Race later worked under him for a year.
Read’s commissions included electric light fittings for the British Art in Industry exhibition of 1935 and Britain Can Make It in 1946. He also designed the central chandelier and all other lighting for the Royal Pavilion at the Festival of Britain in 1951.