Dezeen Magazine

Vanitas lamp by Charlotte Dumoncel d'Argence

Milan 09: French designer Charlotte Dumoncel d'Argence presented a lamp featuring bare, frayed electrical flex at the Jewels and Joules exhibition in Zona Tortona, Milan last month.

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The lamp is part of her Vanitas for a Contemporary Society series of objects, inspired by 17th century vanitas paintings, which served as reminders of the transience of life and the certainty of death.

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The Jewels and Joules exhibition presented work that is both designed and made by design studios in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

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See all our Milan 09 stories MIlan 2009 and all our lighting stories here.

Here's some text from Dumoncel d'Argence:

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Everyday alarming information all seem to merge into one conclusion: our world in unrelentingly going forward to its end. The contemporary Vanitas are melancholically questioning the fate of our society. They are conveying a disenchanting vision of our world, celebrating the pleasure of what is now while meditating on its fragility. The massive copper cable gets loose and ramifies into nothingness. The light bulb itself dangles from a thin copper; the whole object freezes in time its decaying process.