In 1962, three visionaries converged in Merano, Italy, with an audacious proposition: revolutionise lighting through radical material experimentation. Dino Gavina—a design manufacturing impresario who'd founded Gavina SpA in 1960—and Cesare Cassina—co-founder of the legendary furniture house—partnered with Arturo Eisenkeil, a Merano manufacturer importing an innovative spray-on plastic coating from America called "cocoon floss" polyamide. Their mission: create lighting objects that would change how Italians—and the world—experienced artificial light.

The name "Flos"—Latin for "flower"—was chosen by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, suggesting something that would bloom and flourish. From its inception, Flos wasn't simply manufacturing lamps; it was cultivating an entirely new language of light.

The company immediately began collaborating with the era's most visionary designers. Brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, alongside Tobia Scarpa, created Flos's first revolutionary pieces using Eisenkeil's cocoon technique—spraying resin onto steel frames to create ethereal, glowing forms. The Taraxacum chandelier resembled a dandelion frozen mid-flight. The Gatto table lamp became an organic sphere of diffused light. These weren't mere functional objects—they were sculptures that happened to illuminate.

Then came 1962's Arco floor lamp—arguably the most iconic lighting design of the twentieth century. Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni's masterpiece solved an elegant problem: how to project overhead light without ceiling-mounted fixtures or bulky supports near tables. Inspired by street lamps, the Arco featured a telescopic stainless steel arch extending from a substantial 65-kilogram Carrara marble base, allowing light to hover above dining tables or seating areas with sculptural grace. The design was so revolutionary that it's been in continuous production for over sixty years, residing in MoMA's permanent collection and appearing in countless films—most famously in the villain's lair in Diamonds Are Forever.

In 1963, Sergio Gandini joined Flos, first as director and subsequently as CEO until becoming president in 1999. Under Gandini's leadership, Flos pioneered what would today be called a "Think Tank" approach—unprecedented in Italian design industries. Gandini and his exclusive designers decided products, communication, and image collaboratively, tracing desire lines that would create lighting's most iconic objects.

The 1972 "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" exhibition at New York's MoMA—co-sponsored by Flos—achieved international consecration. Throughout the 1970s-80s, production expanded with new factories, the company acquired Gino Sarfatti's Arteluce (adding classics from the 1940s-50s to the catalogue), and Flos opened its first foreign subsidiaries.

Then came the mid-1980s gamble that would define Flos's future. Sergio Gandini met a young Philippe Starck and agreed to manufacture his "fairy-tale lamp" Arà. When Gandini's son Piero developed Starck's Miss Sissi—a plastic icon originally designed for a New York hotel—into an industrial product, it sold 8,000 pieces in ten days and 100,000 within a year. The Starck partnership yielded a succession of bestsellers, including the Gun lamp, the Louis Ghost chair's lighting counterpart, and the crystalline Ohhh!!! and Ahhh!!! sculptures animated by American artist Jenny Holzer's LED "Truisms."

When Sergio passed away in 1999, Piero assumed control and orchestrated Flos's LED revolution. In 2005, Flos acquired Spanish architectural lighting firm Antares, launching Flos Architectural. The company expanded into professional lighting, outdoor collections, and custom bespoke solutions, whilst maintaining collaborations with contemporary masters: Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Michael Anastassiades, Marcel Wanders, the Bouroullec brothers, and Patricia Urquiola.

In 2018, Flos joined B&B Italia and Louis Poulsen to form Design Holding (renamed Flos B&B Italia Group in 2024), creating a design conglomerate operating across lighting and furniture. Piero Gandini briefly resigned in 2019 amid strategic differences but returned, reaffirming the family's commitment to design heritage over pure luxury branding.

Today, Flos operates across four divisions—Decorative, Architectural, Outdoor, and Custom—with headquarters in Brescia, Italy, and Valencia, Spain. Products appear in over ninety countries through flagship stores in Milan, Rome, Paris, New York, and Stockholm, with pieces in permanent museum collections worldwide.

At HFOC, we specialise in sourcing authentic second-hand Flos pieces—from Castiglioni classics to Starck's provocations, from Morrison's minimalism to Anastassiades's contemporary elegance. Each represents over sixty years of Italian lighting innovation, offering discerning buyers the opportunity to illuminate their spaces with museum-quality design at accessible prices.

Flos doesn't create lamps. It sculpts light itself.