A Butterfly Emerges

Jen DeRose -- Interior Design, 3/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

The Cocoon collection, launched in the 1960's, has reappeared in the U.S. as a tribute from Flos to Achille Castiglioni. The line boasts a pair of pendant fixtures: the Viscontea, represented in the permanent collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and the Taraxacum, which is marked by extrusions. These two classics and the Gatto table lamp were among the first products he and his brother Pier Giacomo designed for this manufacturer.

Each fixture in the series still undergoes a labor-intensive, four-day production process involving the original materials. Frames are steel. Diffusers are a composite of resin and spun polymer fiber—introduced to Europeans by the U.S. armed forces, which were using it as a packing material. 200 McKay Road, Huntington Station, NY 11746; 800-939-3567; flosusa.com. circle 360