Cedric Hartman

I had the pleasure of knowing Cedric during my time in Omaha. For the last few years of my stay there, his production shop manager lived in the house next door to me, so I learned a lot about the inner workings of Cedric’s studio from two sides of the studio, as they’d say. A man that labored over the details of anything he touched, I was simply amazed to learn that the shades of his iconic floor lamp started out as pure blocks of metal that were then sculpted into the iconic simple shell form. He was one of the “it” crowd of New York City in the 1960s and 70s, and what really annoyed him was going to parties in high rise apartments with incredible city views, only to not be able to see much of the city at all due to the extensive use of can lights. He described this experience so well to me that I still find myself looking at the design of almost any space and wonder, “How can the human experience here be made better by a simple adjustment…of something.”