Edison Price Papers

Named after the famed inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, Edison Avery Price (1918-1997) entered the field of lighting design through employment at Display Stage Lighting, Inc., a company founded by his father, William E. Price, in New York City in 1917. The younger Price worked at Display Stage Lighting, which specialized in theatrical lighting, from 1935 to 1946, and from 1946 to 1949 undertook the roles of Treasurer and Vice President in charge of design, development, and production at successor firm Display Lighting, Inc. Upon leaving the family business in 1949, Price operated as a self-employed lighting consultant. In 1952 he founded Edison Price, Inc., which grew from a small architectural lighting company based in a Manhattan loft to a design, manufacturing, and consulting firm whose roster of clients included Louis Kahn, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Edward Larrabee Barnes, and Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill. Price provided services and fixtures for such renowned projects as Pei's Grand Louvre in Paris, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome at the Montreal 1967 Expo, Breuer's Whitney Museum, Mies and Johnson's Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, and Kahn's Yale University Art Gallery, the last of which Price undertook in collaboration with his long-time associate, lighting consultant Richard Kelly. After leaving Edison Price, Inc., Price founded Nulux, Inc., in 1990.

Throughout his career, Price designed and manufactured his own products. He developed and customized lighting solutions and fixtures for specific architectural spaces, and employed individuals with similar design aesthetics to complete his company's designs, such as lighting engineer Isaac Goodbar. Simplicity was the hallmark of his fixtures, which tended to blend unobtrusively with the architectural setting. Continuous lighting tracks and recessed fixtures, for instance, were early innovations of the firm that became commonplaces of the industry. Price was expert at illuminating a variety of interiors, from offices and theaters, to museums and libraries.

In recognition of his contributions to the advancement of architectural lighting, Price was awarded the Richard Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award by the Illuminating Engineering Society and, in 1981, the AIA Medal by the American Institute of Architects.