Thomas Wilfred: Clavilux and Lumia Home Models is now available from Christine Burgin Books, as part of the Further Reading Library. Christine Burgin and Andrew Lampert edited it, and I wrote the introduction. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968) devoted his life to the creation of a new art form, the art of light, which he termed “Lumia.” In the 1920s, Wilfred toured the US and Europe to great acclaim staging colored-light recitals with his Clavilux organ. By the late ’20s he had reinvented these large scale performances as self-enclosed light shows for living room entertainment. Wilfred’s aesthetically elegant and interactive Clavilux and Lumia home models were soon found in the collections of important art world figures and in major museums. His work was on view into the ’80s at MoMA, where it was seen by many of the artists who came to work with light as their medium in the ’60s and ’70s. Thomas Wilfred: Clavilux and Lumia Home Models presents a fascinating collection of archival material culled from the Wilfred archive at Yale University and other sources, including never before published sketches by Wilfred and documentation of these strange glowing screens that predated television, video art, and psychedelia.