Toga Chair by Sergio Mazza for Artemide, 1960s

Italian designer Sergio Mazza is known for his plastic design and lighting design, as well as his contribution to the Italian lighting design sector made through Artemide, the world-renowned lighting company he co-founded in 1960.

Mazza was born in 1931 in Milan and studied architecture in Lausanne. After graduating in 1954, Mazza opened his own studio. In 1960, he co-founded Artemide with engineer and designer Ernesto Gismondi (born in San Remo, 1931). Their goal was to produce timeless and technically-innovative products. Mazza designed the company’s first successful product, the Alfa Lamp (1959), which incorporated natural and manmade elements of glass, marble, and metal.

Mazza continued to contribute to Artemide’s ever-evolving collections over the following decades, including fiberglass molded seating and other home furnishings for Artemide throughout the 1960s, which were produced for a short period time, and are highly-sought after by collectors today. He also spearheaded the company’s mission to develop distinctive, architecturally-driven lamps, pendants, and other fixtures in collaboration with major design talents from around the world. Notable designs include the Delta Lamp (1963), Mida Armchair (1966), Bacco Bar (1967), the stacking Toga Chair (1968), which is made from one continuous piece of fibreglass and was first shown at the International Furniture Exhibition in Milan in 1969.

In 1961, Mazza split from Gismondi, and along with architect Giuliana Gramigna opened their Milan-based label Studio Smc. Together they designed furniture and other products for Arflex, Artemide, Cinova, Formica, Krupp, Poltrona Frau, Quattrifolio, Saporiti, and Valenti. From 1966 until 1988, Mazza was the co-director of Ottagono, a magazine which played a significant role in supporting contemporary Italian design culture. In 1967, Mazza began designing for the Italian industrial company Olivari.

Over the course of his illustrious career, Mazza received many honors and awards including a silver medal for his Appartamento Italiano at Milan’s 10th Triennale exhibition in 1954, and a Compasso d'Oro for the Delta Lamp in 1960. A model of his Toga Chair is housed in the V&A Museum in London. 

Legendary Italian lighting manufacturer Artemide was founded in the Milan area in 1959 by engineer-designer Ernesto Gismondi (born in San Remo, 1931) and designer Sergio Mazza (born in Milan, 1931). Notably, the latter designed the company’s first successful product, the Alfa Lamp, a year prior to Artemide’s launch. Both founders went on to contribute designs to Artemide’s ever-evolving lines over the next several decades, alongside spearheading the company’s mission to develop distinctive, architecturally-driven lamps, pendants, and other fixtures in collaboration with major design talents from around the world.

Highlights from Artemide’s vast catalogue include Italian designer Vico Magistretti’s space-age Eclisse Lamp (1967) and German-Italian designer Richard Sapper’s minimal, halogen-lit Tizio Desk Lamp (1972), which has become one of the most popular workspace accessories ever produced. The 1980s saw the launch of the Tolomeo Lamp (1987), designed by Italians Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina, which quickly became an international symbol of the “Made in Italy” style that dominated design tastes at the end of the last century. Today, Artemide continues to commission high-tech, high-concept works—increasingly with a focus on sustainability—from notable international designers, such as Herzog & De Meuron, Naoto Fukasawa, Karim Rashid, and Zaha Hadid, among others. Through the decades, many of Artemide’s lighting designs have been awarded the prestigious Compasso d’Oro, with the company itself receiving a “Career Achievement” award in 1995

For more than 50 years, Artemide’s approach has set the pace for design innovation with well-researched products that often end up in the pages of design history books. Numerous pieces have been acquisitioned into museum collections around the world, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica in Milan, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.