Quality Control
The Alina Pendant.
The Alina Table Lamp.
The new Alina Collection by RTO Lighting (founder Robert True Ogden, pictured here) and designer Brad Ford features hair-on-hide shades in several rich hues.
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”.