In a world where objects often clamor for attention, the Papillona floor lamp by Afra and Tobia Scarpa for Flos, crafted in 1985, chooses a quieter path. It stands like a solitary figure in a Venetian twilight, its silhouette both commanding and elusive, inviting us to linger on its subtleties. Named Papillona — French for butterfly — this lamp is less a fixture of light and more a fleeting moment captured in aluminum, glass, and fabric. Its heat-resistant synthetic wings, adjustable in size and position, seem to quiver with potential, as if ready to take flight, while a frosted glass diffuser softens the glow of its halogen heart, a technology then in its audacious youth. With a dimmer to temper its radiance, the Papillona offers not just illumination but a choreography of shadow and light, tailored to the rhythm of its owner’s life.
Yet, to speak only of its form is to miss the pulse beneath. Afra and Tobia Scarpa, the husband-and-wife architects who met in the hallowed halls of Venice’s Università Iuav di Venezia in the 1950s, were not merely designers but alchemists of space and emotion. Tobia, son of the legendary Carlo Scarpa, inherited a reverence for materials — glass, wood, metal — that bordered on the spiritual, honed during his brief but formative stint at the Venini glassworks in Murano. Afra, born in Montebelluna, brought a grounding sensibility, a knack for rooting their shared visions in human experience. Together, they crafted a legacy that spans from the Soriana armchair (which won the Compasso d’Oro in 1970) to industrial complexes for Benetton, each project a testament to their belief that design should stir the soul as much as serve the body.
The Papillona holds secrets less often told. Conceived in the mid-1980s, it emerged during a period of personal transition for the Scarpas. They had recently moved into a rustic home in the Venetian countryside, a shift from urban bustle to a life closer to nature. Friends recall Afra sketching by lamplight in their garden, inspired by the moths that danced around her. This quiet communion with the natural world found its echo in the Papillona’s wings—not a literal mimicry but a poetic nod to the delicate balance of fragility and strength. Unlike the era’s penchant for ostentatious design, the lamp’s minimalist frame, often painted in muted anthracite or metallic hues, was a rebellion against excess, a whisper of elegance in an age of shouts.
Another lesser-known facet lies in its creation process. The Scarpas, meticulous in their craft, collaborated closely with Flos artisans to perfect the lamp’s adjustable wings. Early prototypes, rarely discussed, used a delicate silk blend for the wings, but these proved too fragile for the halogen’s heat. After months of experimentation, they settled on a synthetic fabric — resilient yet translucent — capable of withstanding the bulb’s intensity while retaining a gossamer quality. This iterative process, marked by Afra’s insistence on “a light that feels alive,” reflects their hands-on approach, a rarity in an industry increasingly leaning toward mass production.
The Papillona also carries a subtle nod to Tobia’s father, Carlo, whose obsession with prismatic glass influenced the lamp’s diffuser. Unlike the stark geometries of many postmodern designs, the Papillona’s glass is softly textured, scattering light in a way that recalls the dappled glow of Venice’s canals at dusk. This connection to Carlo’s legacy is unspoken but palpable, a thread woven into the couple’s broader oeuvre, which includes pieces now housed in the Louvre and MoMA.
Production of the Papillona ceased around 2010, rendering it a rare treasure in the vintage market. Its scarcity is compounded by a curious anecdote: a limited run of lamps in a vibrant red lacquer, commissioned for a Milanese gallery in 1987, was never widely released. Only a handful exist, their whereabouts a matter of collector lore, whispered about in design circles like a lost manuscript. To encounter one is to glimpse a moment when Afra and Tobia dared to let their restraint give way to a flicker of boldness.
In its presence, the Papillona feels like a companion rather than an object. Its wings, adjustable with a gentle touch, invite you to shape the light as one might shape a thought—deliberately, intimately. It is a relic of a time when the Scarpas, weary from decades of prolific creation (their 1985 retrospective in Queens spanned 30,000 square feet, prompting Afra’s wry remark to the New York Times, “Maybe we worked too much”), still found joy in crafting something that could transform a room with a single gesture. To live with a Papillona is to inherit their vision: a world where light does not merely illuminate but dreams, where design is not just seen but felt, like the brush of a butterfly’s wing against the skin.