3 Made-In-America Lighting Brands And What’s On Their Radar

A look into the made-in-America lighting companies that are illuminating the way forward.

Boyd Lighting

Shepherding Boyd Lighting into the future is creative director Schuyler Sweet, a fourth-generation Boyd family member. The company was founded in San Francisco in 1921 and has more than a century of legacy under its belt, including creating the fixtures for the city’s famous Opera House in the ’30s. Since then, it has navigated changing design movements—Beaux Arts, Art Deco, midcentury modern—and countless innovations. That’s where Sweet comes in, with one eye on the past and one on the future, with a goal to distill and finesse the Boyd DNA. “Every generation has their own philosophy,” he says. “My ethos is to bring Boyd back to its classic modern roots and add a levity to the brand.”

Boyd is now headquartered in Colorado, where everything is handmade to order. At the intersection of its aesthetic are materials like brass, bronze and copper—nonferrous, nonrusting materials that will stand the test of time—in silhouettes and shapes devoid of extraneous details. “Part of the challenge is making a really simple design,” says Sweet. “There’s elegance in simplicity.” The Ovalo pendant above embodies these principles: unadorned, hand-finished brass loops are suspended from the ceiling and illuminated by an LED light source. As for what’s to come this year, Schuyler hints at a move towards femininity and softness, with glass having a noticeable presence. “Design is allowed to change with the times and reflect what is going on in the world—it’s a dialogue, a visual language.”

Hubbardton Forge

“When I first started at Hubbardton Forge 13 years ago, I didn’t have a job title,” says Andy Morter. “I was given a long leash to explore and tinker with materials and LEDs, which were changing the lighting landscape at the time.” Fast-forward to present day, and Morter, now design developer under the direction of VP of Design David Kitts, continues to experiment and take creative liberties, resulting in provocative creations like the Snaps collection, shown here and launching early this year.

The system’s leather straps, connecting LED modules that sit within alabaster discs, are fully customizable, giving interior designers the freedom to play with the configuration and positioning to create unique and bold installations. The fluid design is not necessarily inspired by a place or thing or era, but rather by the raw materials at hand. “It’s about the exploration of parts and pieces and bringing these materials and new technologies together,” says Morter.

The Vermont company’s goal is to build upon its storied foundation for everything created, from the newest leather Snaps collection to its iconic metal offerings. What began as a forgery 50 years ago has evolved into so much more, but staying ahead while remaining true to their roots is a formula they have mastered thus far.

RTO Lighting

“I’m definitely the orchestra leader in our opera of sorts,” Robert True Ogden says of RTO Lighting, the company he founded 20 years ago and which has since grown to some 60 people. Departments dedicated to woodworking, ceramics and metalworking are filled with talented makers working alongside employees in logistics and prototyping to create pieces that sing.

At the beginning of Ogden’s career, crafting lights was a creative side gig that didn’t have the limitations of his day job, but he soon realized pursuing it full-time was far more fulfilling. Today, RTO Lighting is a craft-first company whose products are all handmade in its Philadelphia workshop, something Ogden feels immensely proud of as he oversees the artisans who put together each item. “My hope is that, in having outstanding quality, these designs will be collected and passed down through generations,” he says.

Most recently, Ogden has come together with designer and owner of Fair showroom Brad Ford to launch their first lighting collaboration, the Alina Collection, comprising table, floor and pendant lights with beautiful hair-on-hide shades. Ogden was inspired after reading an article about leather tanning and some of the toxicities caused by the process, instead wanting to embrace the natural product as is. The makers love how the product turned out—cowlicks and all—with the RTO Lighting founder noting, “There’s a simplicity to the designs that celebrates form, function and materiality”.