About Us

NOVA was acquired by a private equity group in 1989. In an effort to increase profitability, the new owners terminated Peter Morelli and many of NOVA’s lead craftsmen. The loss of this creative and manufacturing talent had a profound impact on the company, and by 1993, NOVA was on the verge of bankruptcy.

In 1993, Daniel Edelist acquired the iconic California lighting brand and brought Peter Morelli back as Design Director, along with many of his former craftsmen. He also welcomed Larry Langbaum, the son of Murray Langbaum, into the company’s sales team in the New York metropolitan area, continuing the connection between NOVA’s past and its next chapter.

In the early years under Daniel’s leadership, renowned Herman Miller designers Don Chadwick and Tom Newhouse consulted on the direction of NOVA’s design program. They emphasized the importance of maintaining a distinctive point of view while building a lasting brand.

Peter’s return was a remarkable reunion with NOVA and the craftsmen he had trained and worked with for decades. He enjoyed a prolific final seven years with the company, bringing renewed energy to the design workshop and filling it once again with drawings, new materials and new ideas.

When Peter passed away in 1999, Mervyn Weitz became NOVA’s Creative Director. Mervyn was a true California original—a groundbreaking lighting designer, entrepreneur, craftsman and larger-than-life character whose career was defined by curiosity, audacity and an almost complete disregard for convention.

Growing up in Boyle Heights, Mervyn worked in his family’s delicatessen and was forever tinkering with the interior. He instinctively understood how details, furnishings and lighting could transform a space. He attended the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles, where he studied mechanical drafting, lighting and electrical wiring, architectural drawing and furniture design. He later apprenticed with several modernist interior designers in Los Angeles, developing a rare combination of technical precision and creative instinct.

Mervyn was a chain-smoking, rough-talking, big-hearted man who could swear like a sailor, break virtually every convention of polite society and still charm an entire room. An iconoclast and bon vivant, he moved easily among designers, craftsmen, Hollywood luminaries and some of Los Angeles’ more colorful characters. He drove Rolls-Royces, built and lost businesses, and collected a lifetime of stories about wild adventures, encounters with the rich and famous and Hollywood dalliances. He was an extraordinary raconteur and never seemed to run out of a good story.

Behind the larger-than-life personality was a serious designer and craftsman. Mervyn believed lighting should create emotion and character, not simply provide illumination. He questioned convention, experimented with materials and manufacturing, and pursued ideas others might have dismissed as impractical.

He built House of Lamps into a substantial business and later founded Lancer/White Lamps, bringing his entrepreneurial instincts and distinctive design sensibility to each venture. At NOVA, he embraced global manufacturing and the emerging possibilities of LED technology, pushing the company’s design language into new territory and creating many of its most successful and distinctive designs.

Mervyn continued designing for NOVA until his death at age 80. His work remains an important part of the NOVA collection — inventive, confident and unmistakably individual.

Today, NOVA’s design team continues that spirit of exploration, developing new approaches to illumination, smart technology and interactivity while remaining grounded in the company’s long history of purposeful, innovative design.

NOVA of California, NOVA, NOVA Lighting and NOVA Lamps are NL&A Collections, Inc. companies.