Fredrick Ramond Chrome & Lucite Sculptural Tilt Floor Lamp. Mid-century modern design made of clear lucite, brass, and chrome. Marked F. Ramond, 1986.

Size: 72 x 14 1/2 in. 

#2621 #38 . 

Fredrick Ramond Glassman was born in 1931 in Los Angeles, California. The son of European Jewish immigrants, he was often confined to his bed as a child due to extreme attacks of asthma. To pass the time, he entertained himself by sketching, drawing, and constructing model planes and cars. In his early teens he became particularly fixated on the way light played through the windows above his bed, and created reflective and refractive objects to experiment with different ways of harnessing, dispersing, and amplifying light. In 1955 he opened Fredrick Ramond Enterprises, selling novelty gifts and knick-knacks. By 1960, he had expanded to sell his own lighting fixtures, which he called “Lighting in Wood.” Frequenting trendy local shops and museums exposed him to rapidly-changing minimalist and modernist trends, and five years later he renamed the company Fredrick Ramond Lighting, focused primarily on ceiling lights with some floor lamps and table lamps. He also began to patent numerous designs and inventions he had come up with, amassing almost 500 over the next forty years. He became a local celebrity, and the company was recognized nationally as a luxury custom residential lighting designer and manufacturer. He restructured the company as Fredrick Ramond, Inc. in 1987, after marrying his wife Carol, with whom he had two children as well as raising her son from a previous marriage. Many of his employees and associates went on to work for other major lighting companies, and Glassman continued to create innovative designs in modern styles right up until his death on February 3rd, 2007 at his home in Cerritos. Later that year his wife sold the company to Hinkley Lighting, who moved all production materials and some of the employees to their location in Lakewood, Ohio. Today the Fredrick Ramond brand continues to sell well under Hinkley and is available at many major retailers, a respected name associated with stylish interior design.