Floor Lamp, Tenderly
- Designed by
- Shigeru Uchida (1943–2016)
- Material
- Steel with baked Melamine finish, aluminum
- Produced by
- Chairs, Tokyo, Japan
- Dimensions
- 136.8 x 49.5 x 42 cm
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, gift of Toshiko Mori, D92.192.1
This lamp’s telescoping rod and lamp supported on a tripod was inspired by a photographer’s light stand. The halogen bulb in its inverted pyramid shade points directly upward to a square metal screen, which both reflects the light and allows it to pass through, creating ambient lighting for a room. He based his initial sketch for this tilting screen, he explained, on “the image of Japanese men holding up their sun visors to see who is good-looking.”
The name Tenderly comes from Elvis Presley’s song “Softly and Tenderly,” reflecting Uchida’s interest in American pop music of the mid-twentieth century. Designed at the height of the excesses of postmodernism, Uchida’s work anticipated the new minimalism of the 1990s.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, photo: Giles Rivest.