"Gradi" floor lamp by Franco Bettonica & Mario Melocchi for Cini & Nils, It

Designed in 1990 by franco bettonica and mario melocchi and produced by cini & nils, gradi is a nickel-plated piece of alien technology that found its way to the human design market. This unforgettable piece, strongly reminiscent of the neuralyzer used by the men in black to erase unsuspecting witnesses' memory, casts a warm, pleasant light through its borosilicate glass cylindrical diffuser, which can be adjusted by rotating the semicircle it's fixed upon. This easy-to-use and a-pleasure-to-look-at mechanism is fixed upon a slender nickel-plated column that descends into a matte black metal disc base. The lamp is in working order and it can be turned high and low, according to one's needs and wants, by operating the sliding footswitch.