Life does not always go the way one plans it. Sometimes things and circumstances lead us into paths that are unexpected, and then sometimes wondrous things happen. Gino Sarfatti wanted to be an engineer, he attended the University of Genoa. Circumstances changed his plans. His father's business took a turn for the worse, and he returned home to help out. The family moved to Milan and he took a job as a salesman. A friend asked him to make a lamp from a glass vase. He used a light from a coffee maker and was so fascinated by the process that he decided to open a lighting workshop.
He was so enthused that he had printed “Gino Sarfatti — Lighting razionale” (rational lighting) on the stationery of his first workshop. He had no training in design and was completely self taught. Sarfatti worked directly with the craftsmen in developing his lighting fixtures, by doing this he gained a great knowledge of technical side of lighgting, thus being able to produce more and more imaginative types of lighting. He developed around 700 lights of all sorts , which he called "light fittings". He did this from the mid 1930's through the mid 1970's when he retired.
In 1939 he helped to establish Arteluce Company in Milan. During World War II he was forced to flee Italy because his father was Jewish they stayed in Switzerland through out the war. He returned after the war to resume command of the company. He believed that function should dictate form, and that all advances in technology should be thoroughly exploited. He is know for his innovated designs in the lighting field. In the early years he concentrated on direction lighting, later in his career he worked with more sophisticate designs. He hired designers to work in the company as well as going along with his own designs. He rarely named his designs using a series of numbers to indicate the type of lighting.
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