Discover our e-shop and access a digital catalogue of over 40.000 design products.
Go to shopDiscover our e-shop and access a digital catalogue of over 40.000 design products.
Go to shop30 October 2024
Since the first edition in 1967, Snoopy has preserved its identity, elegant and playful at the same time, and today it presents itself in a blue guise.
In 1950, from the pencil of the designer Charles M. Schulz, Snoopy was born: a little dog who, despite not being able to speak, behaves and communicates just like a human being. He walks on his two hind legs, in an upright position and his silhouette is recognizable above all by his rounded muzzle and large black ears. Snoopy is a character who remains in the heart and for over fifty years he has continued to enthuse readers of all ages, and the same fate has befallen the lamp that 27 years later the Castiglioni brothers imagined, inspired by him.
It was 1967 and Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni had already demonstrated their unique ability to combine lightness and concreteness of design, engineering and irony. Characteristics that are best expressed in the Snoopy lamp that the two designers designed that year for Flos, inspired by Schulz’s funny character but at the same time by elegant, almost classic lines and quality materials.
The structure is in fact composed of a very refined oblique column in Carrara marble on which rests a glass disk that acts as a diffuser and a painted aluminum reflector.
The shape of the reflector is what most clearly recalls the figure of Snoopy and on the upper part it has three holes designed by the Castiglioni brothers as a cooling opening and similar to the three grip holes of a bowling ball. The reflector inside has a white coating to spread the light evenly.
All these engineering tools do not diminish the emotional impact of this lamp which, precisely because of the charm it arouses, and the unexpected combination of elegance and irony, has become an absolute icon.
A game within a game is also its luminous flux that is concentrated towards the direction of the work surface and is, instead, reduced in the opposite direction. And it gives a moment of amazement when you realize that despite the inclination of the supporting structure, the lamp is extremely stable thanks to the correct distribution of the components.
In the original version, the electrical parts were contained in the marble base, and the controls were given through a rotating knob, today the controls are touch and the light is dimmable. On closer inspection, therefore, Snoopy is not a divertissement but a sophisticated lighting fixture.
Without compromising its personality, over the years Flos has enriched the project with new chromatic versions choosing the apparently courageous colors starting from a respectful archive study.
In the specific case of Snoopy, the inspiration was drawn from the Sciuko lamp by the same Castiglioni brothers, in which the colors represent a good part of the character of the project. It is from here that the orange and green versions, launched in recent years, were drawn, as well as the very latest version just presented in Navy Blue.
Carefully chosen colors, never by chance, that together with the classic version of the origins, with the black reflector, allow this lamp to be inserted in spaces with a different soul and style.
To this family is also added the Snoopy White Special Edition, the special edition created by Flos exclusively for MOHD: a tribute to the original project that inverts the chromatic order and therefore presents the black marble base and the opal white reflector in a deeply sophisticated ensemble.
