Designers
Richard Sapper

Richard Sapper

Richard Sapper

Germany, 1932

Born in Germany but based in Milan, Richard Sapper creates innovative products by mining the knowledge of far-flung disciplines. One of the few industrial designers never to have attended a school of design or architecture, Sapper studied philosophy, anatomy, engineering and economics. Sapper began his design career working in the styling department of Mercedes-Benz. In 1958 he went to Italy, where he worked with such luminaries as Gio Ponte, Marco Zanuso, and Gae Aulenti. In 1981, Sapper became a corporate design consultant for IBM, for whom he produced a multitude of instantly recognizable designs such as the ThinkPad notebook computer.

A ten-time winner of the Compasso d’Oro, he created the iconic Sapper Kettle for Alessi and the incredibly successful Tizio table lamp for Artemide in 1972. Called a ‘designer's dream,’ this revolutionary table lamp has a sleek, narrow body, adjustable counterbalanced arms and head and swivels smoothly in four directions. In 1972, the use of the lamp’s arms to conduct electricity was a never-before-seen feature, a true innovation representative of Sapper’s work. In over 50 years he has designed more than 200 products and is an impressively versatile designer who can create compelling visual images for sophisticated electronic technology.