Eight unconventional lighting designs that tear up the rulebook
From mouldable wax lampshades that can be melted and remade to a desk lamp that packs flat inside an A4 envelope, this roundup celebrates a series of unusual lighting designs.
City Girls is the studio and alias of two unnamed London artists who create Frankenstein lamps from everything and anything they find on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and the side of the road.
So far, the duo's scavenger hunting has seen them create lighting out of a fibreglass model boat, old sequins and dishevelled butterflies extracted from a smashed up toy. Once each lamp is complete, it is affectionately given a name like Pamela, Lola or Jean.
Among the collection is the elegant Virginia, a swan-like lamp with an arched green head, a metal body made of old chair legs and a wire decorated with oversized glass beads.
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Le Labo 1.0 by Baguette Studio
Paris-based Baguette Studio developed a range of pure wax lampshades that can be melted down and endlessly remade without any loss of material.
Called Le Labo 1.0, the collection brings together a wall lamp, pendant lamp and table lamps in two sizes. The studio created a custom rotational moulding machine, normally used to shape plastic parts, to sculpt the wax components.
"One of the questions we're raising with this project is about ownership of objects," explained Philippe Gaud, who co-founded the studio with Emma Lohner.
"Instead of owning an object you basically own 400 or 800 grams of wax that can be melted down and reused."
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Floor lamp by Wretched Flowers
Wretched Flowers is the brainchild of New York designers Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish, whose practice includes weaving stainless steel chainmail to create armour-like wallhangings and lighting.
This floor lamp is among the pieces in their eclectic collection. Shaped like an elongated version of Verner Panton's iconic 1968 Flowerpot lamp, the lighting was sheathed in a striking chainmail cloak, tapestried with a delicate selection of hand-beaded glass and gemstones.
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London designer Billy Easter released the candy cube-like Gel Lamp through her studio, Public Parts.
The lamp is made of a hollow cube of silicone –measuring approximately 11.5-by-11.5-by-11.5 centimetres.
Its base contains a dimmable LED. At the bottom of the cube sits a slim opening, into which slices of transparent coloured gels can be slid, subsequently changing the colour of the lamp.
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Bic Lamp by Mario Paroli and Seletti
Bic Lamp is a pendant light shaped like the iconic Bic Cristal ballpoint – the world's bestselling pen, informally known as a Biro.
Measuring 12 times the size of the standard pen, the lamp was designed with three different "lid" iterations in classic black, blue and red. The lamp's hexagonal body, which represents the portion of the pen filled with ink, was created out of a large LED light fixture.
Bic Lamp was conceived by designer Mario Paroli and Italian brand Seletti.
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Fused by Audra Grays and Maxim Lester
London designers Audra Grays and Maxim Lester joined forces to conceive this desk lamp out of waste material from their respective design practices.
Called Fused, the project is the culmination of offcuts from Grays' glassmaking activities and scraps from Lester's metalwork, fused together to create this geometric utilitarian lamp.
The emerging designers combined their material leftovers to consciously cut their making costs.
Also based in London, designer Andu Masebo crafted this lamp out of three pieces of galvanised sheet steel that can fit inside an A4 envelope.
Masebo rolled and folded the metal by hand to create a series of round and rectilinear components that, when assembled, are held together with neat incisions.
The lamp was debuted earlier this year at Unit.d, an emerging design gallery in Haggerston that was founded to platform collectible design at affordable prices.
Swedish designer Simon Skinner scoured charity shops and flea markets for second-hand bowls, ashtrays and tiny cat figurines, which he stacked on top of each other to create 20 kitschy table lamps.
Each piece of glassware was sandblasted to create a unified whole, simultaneously covering the internal bulb, creating lamps that look as if they are made of objects suspended in ice.
Skinner has likened his playful process to messing around with Lego or arranging flowers.
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