It's Dumfries Show on Saturday.
That won't mean much to the most people, but for us it is a sure sign.
Winter is coming. We know, we know. Barely have we got use to remembering to take our sunglasses to work, buying ice-creams for lunch or waking up at 5 am because we forgot to shut the curtains - again - than the Dumfries Agricultural Society hold their annual show. And after the Dumfries show the evenings get shorter with increasing rapidity and before you know it the ground will be brown with dying leaves.
Oh Joy!
And so the time is surely rife to start thinking about lighting for the dark months ahead. Below are a few of our suggestions, in addition to our previous favourites from the spring design shows.
FL/Y by Ferruccio Laviani for Kartell
In the first half of 2009 Italian producer Kartell invested a lot of marketing effort into promoting their lighting range, or The Kartellights Collection to give it its correct name. Which is no bad thing. For most Kartell is all about Philippe Starck's chairs, Ron Arad's Bookworm or Philippe Starck's chairs, and too little attention is given to their lighting collection. One of the true highlights in the collection is FL/Y by Ferruccio Laviani. Made in transparent methacrylate, the cover of FL/Y is not perfectly hemispherical but, rather, the cut-off is underneath the height of the diameter allowing it to collect the most light. In addition, the special transparency of the material combined with the sheen of the colours bring to mind a soap bubble, iridescent with reflections of light. FL/Y by Ferruccio Laviani for Kartell is available in 9 transparent colours and opaque black and white.
Talak Lettura by Neil Poulton for Artemide
It takes a brave producer to take what is in essence a table lamp design and scale it up to a floor version. But that is pretty much what the idea behind Talak Lettura by Neil Poulton for Artemide. At 139 cm high, the intention with Lettura is not a lamp to illuminate a whole room, but much more - and as the name implies - it is a floor standing reading lamp. [Lettura is Italian for reading for all who have not been to Milan] The lighting element itself is embedded in the vertical arm, and is available as either an LED or a fluorescent unit. The vertical arm can be rotated round 360 degrees meaning that you can position it over a desk for working/reading and then - assuming your room is correctly laid out - swing it round to allow you to continue to read in your favourite armchair. With its intense, warm light Talak Lettura not only adds an attractive ambience to a room on account of it's stylish minimal design, but also through it's illumination.
WA24 by Wilhelm Wagenfeld from Tecnolumen
Having bought Eileen Gray's Roquebrune chair to place next to your Eiermann Table you will of course be looking for the perfect lamp to complete your informal study corner at home. The WA24 by Wilhelm Wagenfeld was created by the young designer shortly after his admission to the Bauhaus workshop in Weimar. The result of an assignment given to him by Hungarian designer and Bauhaus Professor László Moholy-Nag, the lamp can in many ways be considred as ther starting point of Wagenfeld's design career. As with almost all famous designs from the Bauhaus period, the Wagenfeld lamp's are amongst the most copied of all industrialal designs, and purchasers should be wary of buying cheap replicas where quality craftsmanship has been sacrifice din favour of profit. All Wagenfeld lamps sold by (smow) are, as with all products (smow) sell, officially licensed originals - in the case of the WA24 by Wilhelm Wagenfeld that means from Tecnolumen, Bremen.
Clusterlamp by Joel Degermark for moooi
If we start a post with a sentence like "And now a lamp for those looking for a little different", it can only mean one thing ... moooi. On this occasion we're going to forgo the insane beauty of Horse Lamp by Front and instead recommend Clusterlamp by Joel Degermark. If we're honest when we first saw pictures of the Clusterlamp we thought it was a joke. A big, fat unfunny Dutch joke.
And then felt a little guilty after seeing it "in real life" as we realised that although it unquestionably posses the inventive genius of a Laurel and Hardy or Helge Schneider, it isn't funny.
The PR text from moooi talks of it evoking experimentation with ambient expression, and while that may be true, for us the true charm of Clusterlamp is the fact that you only notice it when it's switched off. We're not going to pretend it looks particularly attractive, or that it is a lamp for every situation, but with it's pleasant, inoffensive illumination and radical design Clusterlamp by Joel Degermark is definitely a lamp for .... you know the rest. Clusterlmap is available with a choice of three bulb sets (each set conatining five bulbs). The bulb sets can also be purchased separately for those looking to mix and match.
No they don't light up, but what's the point in creating a pleasantly lit environment if you can't get comfortable with a good cushion or six. Vitra offer two ranges of cushions each covered with fabrics from US producer Maharam. The Maharam collection "Textiles of the 20th Century" is a range of re-issues of some of the most important designs in the Maharam archives. These include such classics as Geometri by Verner Panton, Small Dot Pattern by Charles and Ray Eames or Millerstripe by Alexander Girard. "Repeat" is a series of re-workings of classic designs from the archives of a Swiss mill by Dutch designer Hella Jongerius. For the Vitra cushion range three of the designs - stripe, hounds-tooth and dot ring - are available in range of colours. Both ranges offer not only exquisite design to finish off and compliment any interior, but also something soft and friendly to hold when you want to relax of a damp autumn evening after a hard days work. Depending on the design chosen the type of fabric does vary and so please check with (smow) before ordering.
