Defining the Modern Lighting Industry

Edison Price Lighting was founded in 1952 by Edison Price (1918-1997), whose signature unobtrusive, low-glare fixtures helped define the modern lighting industry.

Edison Price emerged on the scene as an inventor, designer, manufacturer, and lighting consultant. Price’s modernist aesthetic, expert control of light, and quality craftsmanship captured the attention of giants of modern architecture—including Louis Kahn, Marcel Breuer, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and lighting designers Claude Engle and Richard Kelly—who sought out the expertise and genius of the budding pioneer to help realize their visions. The Edison Price Lighting legacy was born.

Growing up, Price worked for his family’s stage lighting company, Display Stage Lighting. After taking an interest in the family business, Price learned the trade through self-taught instruction by studying IES technical journals. Beginning as a theatrical lighting consultant—with stints in helping sculptor Isamu Noguchi build sets for Martha Graham ballets to providing lighting for flagpole sitters—Edison Price eventually became a full-on lighting designer, creating Edison Price Lighting at the age of 34.

In the height of his profession, Price, once nicknamed a “sensible, mad inventor,” by Philip Johnson, in reference to Price’s unkempt beard, disdain for neckties, and eccentric, obsessive behavior—and would work closely with an electrical mathematician, Isaac Goodbar, on many of his inventions. The ‘mad inventor’ held stringent values, refusing to publish a catalog and at times even refusing to sell, to prevent the misuse of his products—finally producing the first catalog thirty years after the company’s inception. This integrity of design and commitment to the art of lighting established Edison Price Lighting as a trusted lighting brand among the design community.

Milestones in Price’s career include illuminating influential structures of the 20th century, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and Philip Johnson’s Four Seasons Restaurant; and constructing Buckminster Fuller’s invention, the MoMA Tensegrity Mast, along with Shoji Sadao.

When awarded the AIA Medal by the American Institute of Architects, Edison Price was recognized as “one who has brightened more excellent architecture than anyone else in history.”

Today, Edison Price Lighting luminaires can be admired in cultural institutions, civic landmarks, art galleries, and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the World Trade Center PATH station, the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the US Embassy in London, and the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, among other notable architectural structures.

Edison Price Lighting celebrates the legacy of its founder by continuing to uphold his ethos of “functional, efficient, original no-nonsense design.”

Our Factory: Made in New York City

Edison Price Lighting has been crafting light in New York City since 1952. And we don’t intend to stop. Our roots are as much in the ‘big city lights’ city as they are in lighting design – our founder was a lighting designer who established a lighting brand to fabricate the tools needed to realize his vision. In the same way, we are crafters with a vision – a vision to shape light that honors the integrity of culturally significant architecture.

Our in-house factory is equipped with the latest punch press, laser, milling, forming, and other machinery to cut, wash, bend, and assemble our products. Our manufacturing team specializes in skill-driven techniques, including hand-wiring, spinning, die making, and painting, to fabricate many of our parts and components on-site. To complement our craftsmanship, our programmable CNC machinery includes laser cutters, punch presses, and milling machines. We send our glare-free, optically precise reflectors to an anodizing plant in New Jersey. 

We are a proud ‘Made in USA’ company and prioritize locally sourced materials. 

In-House R&D

Our R&D team maintains complete control over the design process from concept to completion. Working closely with customer service and production, our team is inspired by the changing needs of the design community – producing creative solutions in response to modern challenges. Our design ethos is “functional, efficient, no-nonsense design.” 

We love collaborating with you. Bring us your ideas and we will bring them to life. 

Our Safety & Performance Laboratories 

New designs undergo an extensive prototyping and testing process, which includes initial prototyping on a 3D printer, final prototyping built in our in-house factory, and temperature, special environments, photometric, and flicker testing conducted in-house. Our team then sends the products for further testing to independent organizations such as UL or CSA. 

Safety 

Our UL, CSA, TUV, and Intertek (ETL)-certified safety laboratory meets North American, Canadian, and European safety standards. 

Our ‘environmental chamber’ allows us to test luminaires in high humidity environments and determine operating and ambient temperature ranges. 

Performance 

Our performance testing laboratory is equipped with the latest technology that allows us to develop high-performance, specification-grade luminaires. 

Our goniophotometer measures the photometric performance of luminaires of varying dimensions, wattages, feeds, and quantities—optimizing accuracy and scale of testing and performance. Our integrating sphere measures the photometrics of a light source, quickly generating general optical performance data. 

Our Services

Serving the Design Community since 1952 

Since its founding, Edison Price Lighting has worked with lighting designers and architects affiliated with world-renowned agencies. We love building connections with the design community and helping realize their visions. Our friendly team of experts brings a collective experience of over a century of knowledge—practicing the art of lighting in all our collaborations. 

Technical Support 

We provide standard and custom: 

• Factory drawings, mockups, 3D renderings and prototypes, Revit files, and IES files 
• Documentation for LEED, WELL Building Standard, Buy American Act (BAA), and Living Building Challenge 

Lighting Layout Services 

We provide: 

• Point-by-point calculations, AGi renderings, CAD drawings, custom lighting layouts 
• Lighting layout consultation – assisting with planning at every stage of a project, including pre- and post-completion