Our living room lighting situation consists of overhead halogen pot lights that are about a million light years away (crazy 14 ft ceiling) so by the time the light gets to us while sitting on the sofa, we live in a world of dimness.

For almost a year now, we’ve been looking for a task lamp that we could affix to the wall next to the sofa. We loved the Swing Arm Lamp from Stylegarage, but it didn’t quite meet our needs.

Swing Arm Lamp from Stylegarage (credit Stylegarage)

Another light we’ve been coveting is the ever-cute LUXO L-1, however the clamp base would prove to be difficult to use when there is nothing to clamp it to!

LUXO L-1 (pictured with base, but there is also a
clamp version that is otherwise the same – credit LUXO)

Just the other day John came across the Lytegem, a Michael Lax design from 1965. We are big Michael Lax fans–lately we have been collecting his Copco kitchen wares full force. I am pleased to report that just yesterday we got rid of our toxic Teflon pans and we are now using our Copco enamel/cast iron pans exclusively. Not only do these pans look good, but they feel good to use. But I digress.

I grabbed this vintage advertisement off Flickr
(they have some cool vintage ads on their page).

Design Within Reach has a limited commemorative edition of Lytegem lamps for sale – but they only have white left. I presume that once they run out, that’s it (for now). They have a sale on right now which makes me crazy because we just bought the light right before the sale.

Not only are these little guys classics in their own right, they are also über cool in a 2001: A Space Odyssey kind of way. They can be wall mounted or sit on a table, the head swivels around to help direct the light and there is a little telescopic arm that looks like an antennae. It also has a low and high setting.

We chose to wall mount our Lytegem. Here it is fully extended. It doesn’t cover the length of our sofa but it provides some additional reading/ambient light in an otherwise dark area.

This is the light at it’s most compact. Cute.

AND it even comes in a cool retro box. This pleases us.

One lighting problem down, numerous more to go. The bedroom is currently a battle ground of John and LUXO versus Juli. Stay tuned for the results.