Another awesome fixture

Love Le Soleil, a suspension lamp from Vincente Garcia Jimenez debuted by Foscarini (the makers of Ferrucio Laviani's SuperNova, another of my loves) at Euroluce last week. For more of the story, go here.

Recycled Lamps

I'm always a fan of new lighting thoughts, and this recycled wine bottle lamp puts a new eco-spin on illumination.

Jerry Kott handcuts and polishes recycled bottles to create light sculptures. Colorblock table light fixtures have a weighted, distressed aluminum base with a switch on the cord. 3-color blocks are $150, 4-color blocks $280 at re:modern. My only eco-wish: LED bulbs!

XRay Film Lamp

Thanks to Haute Nature for finding this creative, reused item! I'm seeing an IKEA hack in the future....

Windpower Outdoor Lighting

This really caught my eye (and it's only £99.95!):

"The Firewinder® Wind-Powered Outdoor Light is a sculpturally designed outdoor light, which harnesses the wind to create a beautiful upward spiralling light every time the wind blows. In the daylight and when the wind isn't blowing, the product looks unobtrusive. But at night and when the wind blows, it creates a silent wind-powered firework show, illuminating an amazing 'never-ending' and completely mesmerising twirl of light.

Tom Lawton inspired and developed this funky garden feature, the Firewinder®, in the UK, in the hope that it would help people think about the invisible beauty, awesome power and endless resource of the alternative energies that encircle us. Tom's dream is that the Firewinder® will be adopted as an international symbol of sustainability throughout the world. "

I'm a real sucker for lighting....

Balloon lamp ($30 shipped each, but better in groups!)
the Dandylight ($115 shipped): even the name is cute!

Lighting to Love

This LED Bench (2002) by Ingo Maurer is installed in the first room of the Cooper Hewitt's exhibition, "Provoking Magic", featuring the esteemed lighting designer and artist. According to one site's (punctuationally-challenged) description, "this limited production table is a grand masterpiece by maurer. each bench is personally signed by ingo maurer. an extravagant table made of glass, 288 white internal leds that emit light on both sides. power conversion is provided by an external transformer. life span of the leds is an average of 100,000 hours (according to the manufacturer's specification)." All I can say is that the cool internal glow emanating from the glass is something fabulous, and it was a difficult piece to walk away from. The price for the privilege of unlimited seating time: approximately $24k. The rest of the exhibit (the whole second floor of the old Carnegie mansion on the Upper East Side) features installations like LED-equipped wedding costumes, maquettes for well-known designs, and some familiar works, like Lucellino lamps and MaMo Nouchies.

Interactive Occasional Furniture

Part art installation, part children's science museum exhibit (remember the Van de Graaff static electricity inducing spheres?), the interactive Ripple LED table senses movements over its surface and the light patterns change accordingly. The table cames in a selection of sizes and lighting colors. The sleek curves of the table make it a nice piece even when it's not illuminated.

Lights Fantastic Clearance!

Lights Fantastic on Greenville Avenue has long been selling fabulous modern light fixtures and fans.

Their adjacent clearance center, Lights Out, is closing down, and all remaining items must go this weekend, with an extra 20% off to help it all move. While hit or miss on the selection on clearance, the store's full inventory is without compare.

Titanic table lamp

The hidenpeek bed designed for Viable London by Gala Wright has a steel frame and a cascading curtain of aluminum ball chain. Other pieces by Wright include a captivating set of occasional tables called Mekong. The Mekong cube table/lamp is opaque mirror when off, then reveals a glowing sphere when turned on. A companion coffee table has the same effect.



The Titanic lamp, from Charles Trevelyan, Wright's partner in the design group, is laquered wood and steel with a white cotton shade. And a ton of wit.
More pieces from Viable are collected in the Design Museum.

another funky modern art light

A great find from Pan Dan, this Ali Brown light installation called Light Works is a modular configuration of copper piping. As someone who has taken creative liberties with the copper plumbing supplies at Lowe's before in pursuit of modern towel bars, I can both appreciate and contemplate pirating the idea. Cool and attractive for a small art niche, perhaps.

What I've been waiting for

This item from the Shopping blog is music to my ears: an annoucement of Scott + Cooner's semi-annual warehouse clearance sale! The last time I visited their sale, a fabulous Foscarini pendant fixture and two Flos sconces were mine for a fraction of their cost.

Need a lunch break?
Then hurry and head over to the Scott + Cooner warehouse at 1400 Turtle Creek (not the showroom location). Through Sunday, the modern decor company is slashing prices on sofas, beds, lighting, desks and chairs to make space for new merchandise.
"We just don't have the real estate to keep things that long," says company rep Rebecca O'Dell. "Some of the pieces were showroom samples other might be new but have a slight scratch."
Expect savings from 20 to 70 percent she adds, and, best of all, to see prices dip as Sunday approaches to clear it all out! They're open until 5:30 p.m. tonight, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

More Eye-catching lighting

Elizabeth Hertzfeld's Remake light magnet ($349 for four modules) is designed to reconfigure in many ways, and one switch can power up to twelve modules. The versatility of being able to "remake, decompose, and recompose the light according to your mood" adds interactive dynamism.



The Slide light ($189) by Sam & Jude is customizable by adding personal slide images. Changing the slides adds variety. For those without slides, Generate can provide slide sets to accompany the light. The personalization of a slide set with somebody else's slides is a new sort of modern irony, no? The light is also directly available from SuckUK ($200)

SCIN Fringe Light

When a new online design shop based in London opened this week (with announcements to numerous blogs to herald the launch), I had to check it out. Rockett St George has a mix of accessories and furnishings, but one of the best finds is a fabulous ceiling fixture from SCIN.


The Fringe Pendant Light (approx $250) comes with rods in single colors or with interchangable colored rods. SCIN is a design firm founded by architects who also have an online shop and a storefront in London (and coincidentally their lamp is priced much lower than Rockett's approx $500). It's also shown up on Crib Candy and a few other sites...truly an eye-catching fixture.

Cantoni Modern Furniture

With the Partners Card in hand, "the world's finest original contemporary collections" just got 20% more affordable for the next week. The giant (30,000 square foot) North Dallas showroom features scene after scene of modern, serene, and comfortable arrangements. Selections include American Leather, Dellarobbia (whose two-piece Yasmin sectional pictured below, is very tempting), and Artek. A staff of sales and design consultants is available to assist, but I was able to wander the store for fifteen minutes without an officious intrusion.

Cantoni began in Dallas in 1984 and has expanded to five stores (also in Houston, Atlanta, Irvine, Los Angeles) and an outlet center around the corner from the showroom. The outlet features a mixture of floor sample chairs, bedrooms, lighting, and accessories, often 40% or more off the showroom price. If you're in love with the Menlo Park or Astoria sectionals, however, be sure to check out the American Leather outlet before you break out the AmEx...there might be a better deal!

Lucellino table lamp

Thanks to Joel at Blue Ant Studio, I now know that Ingo Maurer has a table version of his spectacular lamp design. Unica Home (one of my fave online modern design sources) describes it as a

"whimsical lamp derives its name from the italian words luce ("light") and uccellino ("little bird")...available in wall sconce or table lamp versions. the lucellino is made of glass, brass, plastic and hand-crafted goose feather wings, these lamps also have a touch-tronic feature which allows for on/off and dimmer control with the mere touch of the brass wire stem. a 50 watt non-halogen bulb as well as a spare bulb are supplied. free shipping in the continental united states.

german born artist and light objects designer, ingo maurer has been the recipient of many design awards and his work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the centre georges pompidou, the fondation cartier in paris, the stedelijk museum in amsterdam and the museum of modern art in new york. considered an outsider with rare artistic style, ingo maurer adds provocation and fun to the world of design."

The table version is $650 at MossOnline, and $660 at Y Lighting. For those with slightly bigger tastes and budgets, the Birdie chandelier ($2088 at Unica) and its big-brother birds birds birds ($5423) are fabulous!

Spiral Glass

Rees Bowen owns Firehaus and is a member of the Spiralglassinc group. At a recent sweltering summer open-studio show, he and apprentice Matt Hare created a 3-foot multi-colored platter in front of a (very hot) audience. Works vary from sculptures to light fixtures, platters with a dramatic variety of undulous curves and captivating color swirls. Bowen worked the glass with choreographed forceful attention as inorganic materials took on the organic form. Handblown glass is more captivating than two-dimensional pieces through its manipulation of ambient light and its evocation of the artist's influence on the physical properties of the medium.