Hasta La Ideas

Working with skilled local craftspeople is both a duty and an opportunity for Indian designers, says Prateek Jain of lighting design company Klove, in the third and final movie from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.

“It’s the biggest job of a designer to make sure that they work with handicrafts people,” says Prateek Jain, co-founder of Klove. “Whether it’s a fashion designer who works with an embroiderer or whether it’s us working with wood carvers or stone cutters.”

Both sides benefit when designers work with traditional craft producers, says Jain, and can help bring craftsmen’s work to new markets. “It’s very important to apply a more contemporary design aesthetic to these handicraft [skills]” he says.

Jain’s chosen medium is glass, thanks to an encounter he had with craftsmen in Ambala, a town in northern India. When he saw local glass-blowers creating intricate glassware for laboratories, he knew he had spotted an opportunity.

“We saw that they were doing these beautiful, flawless bowls of silica glass,” he says. “The blowers had been making beakers, flasks and test tubes for generations. We realised that [we could use] this skill set to explore home decor.”

Together with his partner Gautam Seth he took these techniques used for creating lab-ware into unexpected contexts: creating luxury lighting installations for an international client base.

Klove now creates large, ornate custom-made lighting installations working in a palette of blown glass, brass, steel and copper.

Klove was participating in the Made In… India Samskara exhibition. Curated by Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi and creative think tank BE OPEN, the show celebrates collaborations between contemporary Indian designers and skilled Indian craftsmen.

For the show Klove used blown glass and beaten metal to create a large lighting installation in the shape of a peacock, India’s national bird.

“We knew that [the curators] wanted to represent India in a modern way. Instantly the idea of a peacock came into our head because it’s the national bird,” says Jain. “We wanted to represent the peacock in a contemporary manner but at the same time have a strong Indian aesthetic to it”.

The feathers that make up the peacock’s fanned tail are represented by 48 slender glass stems, similar in form to elongated laboratory flasks.

“The great part about being in this country is that you have great access to a great resource of talent. You have craftsmen who have been doing this work for many centuries” says Jain.

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

The post Work with Indian craftsmen to keep handcrafting
skills alive, says designer Prateek Jain appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: designer Tom Dixon presented a collection of pendant and table lights that combine geometric brass-plated planes with spherical glass shades in Milan last week.

Dixon‘s Plane collection features two-dimensional surfaces surrounding spherical diffusers, creating lamps with geometric outlines that change depending on the aspect they’re viewed from.

“Geometry is a constant in my work,” Dixon told Dezeen, explaining the form of the lamps. “Actually I think in the main I have been minimal and geometric for many years now, starting with the Jack Lamp in 1997, or maximal and geometric, such as with the Pylon Chair in 1990.”

The flat planes are made from steel covered in reflective brass plating, while the spherical diffusers are produced from white glass.

“The flat and the round, the shiny and the matt, the reflective and the translucent is just part of the exploration of opposites that we started a couple of years ago with a collection called Rough & Smooth,” Dixon added.

Pendant versions are available with either round or triangular planes, while the table lamp balances on a separate surface fixed perpendicular to the rear of the metal section surrounding the light.

Electrical cords that carry current to the bulbs disappear into raised channels that lead from one edge of the flat surfaces to the central glass sphere.

Grouping the lights close to one another results in dynamic reflections across the warm brass surfaces.

The lights were displayed at Tom Dixon’s stand at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile last week, alongside a range of new furniture and lighting products referencing the comfortable and cultured environment of a traditional British members’ club.

The post Tom Dixon launches “minimal and geometric”
Plane light collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Finnish design brand Iittala is showing a collection of boxy shelves, plywood furniture and glass lamps in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

The homeware collection includes a series of metal storage units by Danish designer Cecilie Manz. Called Aitio – meaning theatre box in Finnish – these can be wall-mounted to hold small objects.

These shelves are made from powder-coated steel and come in a variety of whites and greys, as well as yellow. There are also plastic hooks that clip over the edges. “My focus with Aitio was functionality, simplicity and aesthetics,” said Cecilie Manz.

The Kerros shelf by Swedish designer Matti Klenell is a side table made of plywood, which can also be used as a tray. Klenell described the shelf as “a new kind of object that sits somewhere between furniture and a household product”.

Additions to Iittala’s lighting collection include a new grey version of the Leimu lamp by Norwegian designer Magnus Pettersen, the Kuukuna lamp by Oiva Toikka and the Nappula Candelabra by Matti Klenell.

The Kuukuna, a mouth-blown glass light, was originally designed in 1986 by Toikka and has been resurrected in a slightly larger version.

Klenell’s six-candled candelabra comes in white and has evolved from the single candleholders designed by Klenell in 2012. These are now available in red and yellow. All are made from powder-coated steel.

The designs are on show at in hall 16, place D30, at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile from 8 to 13 April.

The post Theatre box-shaped shelves by Cecilie Manz
feature in Iittala’s latest collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Dutch studio Bernotat & Co created 3D-printed woven fabric lamps that emulate microscopic organisms to show in the Ventura Lambrate district in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

Anke Bernotat and Jan Jacob Borstlap of Bernotat & Co have created Radiolaria, a collection of 11 lamps made from a 3D-printed polyester textile normally used in technical applications where the material is hidden.

Thanks to the 3D-printed structure, the soft lamps do not require additional reinforcement. “When sewn together, the fabric creates its own character and shape,” Borstlap told Dezeen. “We let the fabric do the design work in a way.”

Influenced by the drawings of German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, the project is named Radiolaria after a type of microscopic biological organism that produces intricate mineral skeletons.

The designers created the patterns for the textile based on these organisms, whose skeletons are known for their natural geometric form and symmetry.

In a completely dark room, the lamps glow as the textile has been sown together with a glow in the dark material. “It creates a dreamy kind of atmosphere in your bedroom,” said the studio. “It also acts as a point of reference so you don’t bump into your bed.”

All lamps come with porcelain fittings and a silver-coloured cable and will be show from 8-13 April on via Ventura 6 in the Ventura Lambrate district in Milan.

Product photography is by Rogier Chang. All other photography is by Marleen Sleeuwits.

The post 3D-woven fabric creates organically shaped
lamps that glow in the dark appeared first on Dezeen.

I love my apartment, but there are still two things that drive me up a wall on a daily basis… the hideous smoke alarms and security system. Total vibe killers! You can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t live without ‘em. Until now… the Drop lamp might just look like beautiful blown glass, but within its decorative shell are technologies to alert the user to a number of home situations including fire, smoke and break-ins! They connect via WiFi, are always hardwired and totally disguised so you can rest assure your place is being watched over all without ugly ceiling fixtures.

Designer: Subinay Malhotra

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(A Lamp to Watch Over You was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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