Studio Artemide design pencil pen holder modello Dedalino cheapest Emma Gismondi Schweinberger Italian design white beige sixties mid century space
In this listing we are very pleased to offer a cream white version of Artemide's Dedalino pencil holder, designed by the spouse of Artemide's founder, Emma Gismondi Schweinberger.
The Dedalino has 7 cut outs for pens in a beautifully atomic age shaped outer part in cream white.
This outer part is slid over an equally cream white colored bottom part. The 7 cut outs are matched with seven rings in the bottom part of the holder.
The original design dates from 1966 and this pen holder cheapest was in production for at least over a decade.
There is no date stamp on it so we safely date this one to the (early) 1970s.
Emma Gismondi Schweinberger used a core design to make three different objects, simply by varying in size. The largest one was called Dedalo and intended as an umbrella stand. Then there was the medium version, called Dedalotto, intended as a vase and the smallest, called Dedalino, a pencil holder - the one offered here.
Emma Gismondi Schweinberger designed another umbrella stand for Artemide, the Elisa and although different in shape the Elisa and Dedalo/Dedalotto/Dedalino line do share a number of design principles, such as separated holes with matching caveats on the bottom side.
For quite obvious reasons the Dedalino pencil holder is the most common to find although not always in the great condition as offered here. The Dedalotto vase is the rarest to find. Not because less were sold of one compared with the other (although that could be too) but simply because of the use and wear. The vase was designed to hold water and of course a pencil holder not.
All items from Dedalo/Dedalotto/Dedalino line were made in various bright colors. Sometimes and understandably these are attributed to Kartell. Artemide was less known for its ABS and melamine plastic objects but nevertheless they did make a few, now nearly all mid century design classics, such as the Spyros ash-tray.
This Dedalino is fully marked on the bottom side.
Materials: ABS plastic
About Artemide
Artemide is a design driven Italian lighting manufacturer founded by Ernesto Gismondi and Sergio Mazza in 1959. Its first lamp, fittingly named Alfa - designed by Mazza -, was released in 1960. It was the start of an ongoing stream of lighting design classics, created by some of the greatest designers of the past 60 years.
Like the founder of equally famous Italian lighting manufacturer Arteluce, Gino Sarfatti, Ernesto Gismondi was educated as an (aeronautical and missile) engineer. Next to running Artemide and designing lamps, he taught Missiles Motor Technology at the Politecnico of Milan between 1964 and 1984.
Gismondi was one of the founders of the famous Memphis design mouvement.
Many Artemide lamps were such a succes that were in production for decades. The Eclisse by Vico Magistretti (1967), Tizio by Richard Sapper (1972), Tolomeo by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina (1986), and Pipe by Herzog & De Meuron (2004) are just a few of the best known,
Many lamps have won the Italian Compasso D'oro Award. In 1994 Artemide as a firm received The 'Compaso D'oro' career award and on top of that the European Design Prize In 1997. In 2006 Artemide won two Best of The Best Red dot design awards for lamps designed by designer Neil Poulton and by architects Herzog & de Meuron. In 2013 Artemide won the IF Product Design Award for the lamp Cata designed by light designer Carlotta de Bevilacqua. And lastly just this year (2018) Ernesto Gismondi was awarded the Compasso d'Oro Career award and his Discovery lamp was also awarded Compasso d'Oro 2018.
Artemide lamps are considered on an international level as icons of contemporary design; they are exhibited in most museums of modern art and design collections, for example MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, Musée des Artes Décoratifs in Montreal, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, etcetera.
The list of designers that have worked with Artemide in the past (and some still today) is dazzling and includes Ettore Sottsass, Sir Norman Foster, Michele De Lucchi, Richard Sapper, Enzo Mari, Neil Poulton, Karim Rashid, Giò Ponti, Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Carlotta de Bevilacqua, Naoto Fukasawa, David Chipperfield, Jean Nouvel, Karim Rashid and Herzog & De Meuron.
These days Artemide is still established in the suburbs of Milan. It operates through 24 subsidiary and affiliated companies and has a distributive network that includes 55 single-brand showroom in the most important cities in the world. Artemide products are distributed in 98 different countries. With five production units in Italy, France, Hungary and Canada, 2 glassworks and an R + D structure supported by prototyping laboratories and cutting-edge tests, the group nowadays employs about 750 people, of which 60 in R&D.
Although in principal and nowadays exclusively a lighting manufacturer the company did always have a small range of other items in its collection, which it called objects, throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
About Emma Schweinberger
Emma Gismondi Schweinberger (1934 - 2019) was born in Cologna Veneta (IT). She was the wife of Ernesto Gismondi, owner and co-founder of Artemide. She attended the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Milan and then graduated in Interior Architecture at the Athenaeum Institute in Lausanne in 1958. Little biographical information is known about her. She consciously stayed away from the limelight. As far as we know she only designed three lamps for Artemide, the Aminta, Chi and Jota lamps. All three lamps are classics but not that known compared to some other Artemide lamps. However when it comes down to the other objects she designed for Artemide she did manage to design a few design icons of which her umbrella stands Dedalo and Elisa and night stand Giano (and derived vase and ashtray) and the two related coffee tables Are & Tondara are most known.
Measurements:
Height: 8.5 centimeters / 3.35 inches
Diameter of the base: 9 centimeters / 3.54 inches
Diameter of the openings: ca 1.3 centimeters / 0.51 inches
Weight: 62 grams.
Condition:
Excellent condition.
This is a used pen holder in a very attractive condition.
First and formost it is entirely damage free: no cracks, chipping or deformation.
The ABS plastic is still very glossy.
The color is a very pretty cream white and it is consistent all over without color differences.
That will partly be caused by natural discoloration and originally it will have been a bit lighter.
The outside is entirely stain free.
We could not detect any tangible scratches on the outside, only very light rubbing lines/ scratches that do not stand out at all in daily use.
On the bottom inside there are needle point size dots and traces from ink pencils. These are minor and completely normal for a used pencil holder.
That is all there is to report about this Dedalino.
Please refer to the pictures to get the best impression.
We have many more pictures available of this item. Do not hesitate to ask for them in case of doubt.