Since hauling several huge hunks of fallen trees home after Hurricane Sandy, we’ve been attuned to interesting ways of transforming them. We especially love Italian designer Marco Stefanelli‘s idea of illuminating the splits and cracks in the wood with LEDs (he embeds them in resin), and the thinking behind creating his wonderful luminous stools and tables:
I wanted to take inspiration from the research of natural objects that, in some ways, have reached their final step in the life cycle. They are for example sawmill’s outlets, pieces of urban architecture, logs carried by the river, firewood…
I have tried to give these pieces a second chance, tempting to make the light come out from the material and to amplify the sensorial experience. read more…
We’ve long been fans of lighting designer David Weeks beautiful lighting, having been smitten initially with his sculptural Lunette clip-on shades. On December 14th and 15th, Weeks will hold his annual sample sale, where you can buy samples and prototypes of some of his wonderful designs at steep discounts. We won’t be going. We checked out the wattage of the bulbs Weeks’ lights take: max 60 watts for many, and a dim 40 watts for the lovely Shell Sconce, above, as well as the Cement Standing Lamp and potentially-indespensible Pearson clip light,both below.
We don’t understand this dim-bulbism because, read more…
These recent pictures spotted on Desire to Inspire affirmed the enduring chic of noguchi-esque paper shades, a subject we’ve posted about before since so many true mid-century modern houses relied on them. The formula is simple: read more…
Good lighting is essential to making any space come alive, ESPECIALLY one suffering from disorder, as ours has during our recent move of lock-stock-and-many barrels. The solution was Lunette, lighting designers David Weeks’ and Lindsey Adelman’s inexpensive clip-on lamp shade we bought and blogged about a couple of years ago, but never had occasion to use. We bought two more in advance of the move and found them a perfect INSTANT solution to bare bulbs and unresolved lighting fixtures. It’s soft form is somehow perfect with our sculptural 50′s Atomic base which has lost its original globe, as well as the inexpensive porcelain pull-chain socket ”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. read more…
We were completely smitten with this wondrous PINK staircase, wondering how we’d feel if we had it to walk down/up everyday, when we came across a video by Minute Physics explaining why pink doesn’t really exist. read more…
The great blog Ouno recently documented a visit to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyds Wright’s winter home and the main campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A photo of the “dinner cabaret room” caught our eye: strings of tiny lights glowe3d on the ceiling. We don’t know if this is a Wrightian touch or an innovation of the current caretakers (more images below). But it got us thinking about using string lights as actual indoor lighting…not Christmas lights, but strings of lights with bigger, more illuminating bulbs.
So, we went on the hunt for ideas and sources, to explore the possibilities.
We love these lights hung vertically to make a partition and define a room… read more…
Recently, we’ve been on the hunt for great lighting, that is, lighting that is cool looking and gives us the option of as much light as we want to adjust hi-or-low with a dimmer. We keep finding wonderfully designed lights with really low wattage bulbs, like 40 or 60, which rule them out. We want at least 100 watts worth.
As always when we can’t find what’s in our heads (which is surprisingly often), we look around to see if we can make it ourselves. For a while now, we’ve been a fan of lighting designer Lindsay Adelman’s free d-i-y lighting plans (there are four on her website) which give you a basic plan, parts, where to buy them, and how-to’s - information that makes it possible to improvise. A note in the You Make It section of her site says:
“Experimenting with off-the-shelf parts is how Lindsey got started before designing and manufacturing the custom system for the Bubble Series.”
We’re inspired. We’re already looking into read more…
Although we love walking through the canyons of trees for sale on New York City streets, we haven’t been able to wrap our heads around buying and decorating a Christmas tree. Lately, we’ve seen a number of festive alt-Christmas trees made with inexpensive string Christmas lights: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… read more…
Asymmetry can be such a relief, “breaking” the obvious perfection of a designed space. We’ve long been a fan of mismatched chairs…but hadn’t thought of mismatched pendant lights. A simple, unexpected visual surprise.
(Video link here.) Barr Hogan sent us this compelling video about a man who invented simple, easy-to-make solar light “bulbs” using ordinary materials housed in recycled plastic liter bottles. He has literally brought daylight indoors to poor families in the Philippines whose houses are so close together, they block the sun from entering. Now the My Shelter Foundation and other organizations have started campaigns, hoping to spread this simple d-i-y lighting throughout the world.
We are always inspired seeing ordinary materials transformed into a useful technological wonder – making a powerful force for change – in this case light – out of virtually “nothing”. It reminded us of the amazing William Kamkwamba, who rigged a windmill out of bits-and-pieces to bring electricity to his village in Africa. The survivalist in us loves knowing the recipe for this strange homemade lighting. read more…
Having been swept up in hype (and hope), we spent $35 or so to buy a Plumen bulb, the high-concept CFL (compact flourescent lamp) that is getting a lot of play on design blogs these days. Designed by Sam Wilkinson for the London-based boutique electronics brand Hulger, the Plumen is meant to be the answer to the unattractive compact fluorescent bulbs whose energy-saving virtues are, for many, cancelled out by the ugly light they cast. The company says that the CFL’s problems can be solved by changing the design. “Make the bulb attractive and people will enjoy a better quality and spend a bit more”. Yeah?
Hopeful, we screwed ours in and voila: the sculptural Plumen emitted the same terrible cold, dim, gulag-like light of an ordinary CFL. The naked truth of the Plumen is: when lit, its 60 watts are ugly… the fancy designed failed in its mission. The Emporor’s New Clothes came to mind. read more…
We are slightly obsessed with the idea of using Lego’s to make functional objects that we can really use; it’s kind of a mindgame we play with ourselves that we hope to put into action one day, since you can now buy as much of any color Lego as you want at Lego stores across the country. We are inspired by two recent finds: London-based designer Sebastian Bergne‘s Lego greenhouse, that has live plants and vegetables growing within.. read more…
Speaking of tinkering, while we were culling photos from Artists’ Handmade Houses for our recent giveaway, we came across a photo of Constantino Nivola’s living room in his house on Long Island (see photo below). In the back corner, partially blocked by a chair, is an intriguing light made of Tinkertoys and shiny rolled paper. OMG, Tinkertoys! Unbelievably brilliant…so we went searching the internet for more pictures of his wonderful idea. We found only this photo, in which you can barely make out a fab ceiling light made of Tinkertoys: read more…
As we combed through Artists’ Handmade Houses, the prize in our current book giveaway, we noticed an interesting theme running through the houses of many of the 13 artists featured. They often used the simple rice paper globe ceiling lights pioneered in the 50′s by Isamu Noguchi: an electrical wire hung from the ceiling from which hung a bulb surrounded by a translucent rice paper shade. Paolo Soleri, Sam Maloof, Wharton Esherick, Ruth and Robert Hatch all used them to great effect: they lend a pleasing sculptural element to a room while casting a lovely light.
George Nakashima had them all over the house. We’re wondering if he made this clever wall light by cutting a globe in half and affixing it to the wall. read more…
We love this bed made of shipping pallets that the endlessly clever Swedish designer Maliin Stoor built for her daughters: a chain of LEDs illuminates it from underneath. Here are details, translated from Swedish (we hope accurately enough):
“Lights under the bed…Inspired by a hotel I recently stayed in…I bought a light chain and put it under the bed. (When we cast the concrete slab we made sure to fix a number of electrical plugs in the floors, even one under the bed. I felt smart!) The girls think it’s really nice and hoped that the loop shone all night, but the loop is set on a timer and is on from five o’clock to half-eleven; it works for us …” read more…
”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. 
: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… 
for our recent giveaway, we came across a photo of 
