A Perfect Pair: Wormley and Swank Lighting Ceramic Lamps!

We enjoyed a lot of Edward Wormley’s work that we featured yesterday, but we fell in love with one of his simpler pieces. Though it’s fun to include bright, bold and interestingly shaped furniture in an interior space, it’s equally satisfying to find a piece that, while neutral, makes all of your other furniture and accessories pop.

This 1950's Edward Wormley couch was created for the Dunbar Furniture Company, and features lovely nubby upholstery with a great warm gray color. It’s a long couch, measuring over seven feet, and so gives quite a narrow and elegant appearance. The arms are high and boxy and connect gracefully to the back of the couch with a slightly curved upholstery detail that is unexpected. The couch comes with three plush back cushions, but when removed they expose a simpler button-tufted back, creating an even more sleek appearance. The bottom cushion is all one cushion rather than three, also visual elongating the couch. Finally, all these subtle and great details rest on good-looking mahogany wood legs.

This pair of Swank Lighting Mid Century Ceramic Lamps by Deruta is coming close to topping our favorite lamps of all time list. Imported by Balboa in the 1950's, they were recently uncrated from a shipping container and rebuilt with solid brass hardware. They feature a stunning horizontal striped ceramic pattern of a cerulean blue, rich tan, thin gold edging and all wonderfully glossy. Mounted on a simple Lucite base with a bull nosed edge and coming in at a perfect height of twenty-six inches tall, the lamps are tall, elegant and luxurious.

Combined the Wormley couch and ceramic Swank Lighting lamps are dynamite! The couch’s stately elegance and casual seating are elevated to absolute luxury when combined with the lamps. The gray, blue and tan are a natural color palette that both soothes and excites. The tallness of the lamps complements the long length of the couch perfectly. We even love how the detail of the couch’s back mimics the detail on the neck of the lamp. Both pieces are unapologetically Mid-Century Modern but both with a retro, respected reverence of the past.

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