Aluminum increasingly found its way into lighting designs as well. Many conical shades were made of spun aluminum, a process improved during the war. Cone reading lamps with star-shaped cutouts were mounted on the walls of many bedrooms. One advertisement for these exclaims: “Pivot the heavy aluminum reflector in any direction—up, down or sideways, it throws the light where you need it.” A memorably wacky aluminum example was the PH Artichoke. This pendant light featured layers and layers of aluminum leaves splayed out at cascading angles. While this ambitious lamp-sculpture resembles the vegetable for which it is named, it could just as easily be mistaken for an interplanetary probe.
Other types of lighting were redesigned as well, with flexibility as a key goal. Floor lamps went from bulky, strapping creations to winsome concoctions that seemed to defy gravity. Lamps appeared with multiple, stiff arms attached to a rod base by an adjustable socket—affording them radial movement to sustain seemingly impossible poses. Other desk and floor lamps had appendages that could be snaked medusa-like into a variety of positions (“Here are three reasons you’ll never be left in the dark,” hawks a 1950s ad). Perhaps this speaks to folks rearranging their furniture more frequently. Certainly, flexible designs reduced the need to have to buy fresh lights to fit changing demands—whether they resulted from redesigning a room, or the morphing needs of a growing family.