Wright Auction

It is likely no surprise that comfortably lighting a house made almost entirely from glass could prove challenging, at least in the nighttime. When architect Philip Johnson executed his famed 1949 Glass House, which was to be his own residence, he called upon lighting pioneer Richard Kelly to assist with the formidable task. As Kelly explained to the Saturday Evening Post, "[Johnson] was fed up with trying to get by with makeshift light indoors. It glared at him from the the blacked-out glass, even when he cut it down to six wax tapers in a candelabrum. He suggested I tackle the job." 

Kelly ingeniously devised a three-pronged solution to illuminate Johnson's glass structure with a combination of indoor and outdoor lighting. In addition to strategically placed lighting along the building's exterior roof as well as flood and spotlights placed at the base of the trees, Kelly devised uplights for the home's interior. In 1953, the pair adapted the design of these cylindrical lights for a larger audience and, of course, Johnson's close collaborator Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This particular example originally belonged to Mies van der Rohe, who used the lamp in his Chicago home.