Dimensions Height: 31.5-119cm x Arm reach 78-108cm Base: ⌀11cm
Material black aluminium, technopolymer
Specification IP20 LED 3000K, 8W, 468lm, CRI=90 with dimmer
Shipping & Returns
Made to order — about 6–8 weeks
This piece is produced to order by the maker. Production usually takes about 6–8 weeks, after which we despatch it from London.
Because it is built for you, cancellation is limited once production has started on a configuration you specified. Please check the timing before you order — and ask us if the date matters.
Richard Sapper was a German industrial designer who spent most of his working life in Milan. Tizio, made for Artemide in 1972, changed what a desk lamp could look like.
The arms are held in balance by counterweights, and the structure that carries the head also carries the current to it — first a very low-voltage halogen capsule, now also LED. There is no cable along the arm because the arm is the cable.
Artemide's founder Ernesto Gismondi said of it in 2014 that “Tizio is beautiful in any different position”, and that nothing had been changed over the years for the simple reason that there was nothing to change.
Left, on a desk, holding whatever position it was left in. Right, lit — there is no cable along the arm because the arm carries the current.
Richard Sapper was a German industrial designer who spent most of his working life in Milan, designing for Italian manufacturers across furniture, lighting and consumer products.
Tizio, made for Artemide in 1972, changed what a desk lamp could look like. Sapper ran the low-voltage current through the metal arms themselves, which removed the need for wiring and left two bare counterweighted rods that hold any position.
It won the Compasso d'Oro in 1979 and sits in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sapper's other long collaboration was with Alessi, and he taught product design in Stuttgart for many years.
Founded in Milan in 1960, Artemide shapes light around people — Tolomeo, Tizio and Eclisse among its classics.
Ernesto Gismondi founded Artemide in Milan in 1960. The catalogue reads as a history of post-war Italian lighting: Vico Magistretti's Eclisse, Richard Sapper's Tizio, and the Tolomeo drawn by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina.
The company works to a philosophy it calls The Human Light — light made for people rather than for its own effect. Design and production are run from Pregnana Milanese, just outside Milan.
