lighting

Koskela launches Ngalya lighting collection

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By Penny Craswell

Ngalya is a project by Koskela that celebrates contemporary Indigenous fibre arts in Australia. This powerful work that play an important role maintaining cultural practice is also incredibly sought after as lighting.

Ngalya is a new Koskela range of lighting created in collaboration with six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art centres from around Australia. Photo: supplied

Created to mark 10 years of Koskela’s collaboration with Indigenous Arts Centres (that began with Yuta Badayala by the weavers of Elcho Island Arts), Ngalya sees Koskela working with Indigenous makers from six different Arts Centres across Australia to create a series of completely new lighting designs.

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Review: Full Spectrum installation by Flynn Talbot for London Biennale

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By Penny Craswell

Australian designer Flynn Talbot has designed the installation ‘Full Spectrum’ as Australia’s exhibit at this year’s London Design Biennale (4-23 September), which explores the theme of ‘emotional states’.

Flynn Talbot's "Full Spectrum" at London Design Biennale, Somerset House. Photo: Mark Cocksedge
Flynn Talbot’s “Full Spectrum” at London Design Biennale, Somerset House. Photo: Mark Cocksedge

Responding to the outpouring of love and positive emotion from last year’s Marriage Equality vote and legalisation in Australia, Talbot has created a circular screen of rainbow colours made with 150 hanging fibre optic strands. Read more →

Object Stories: Jolly light by Kate Stokes

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By Penny Craswell

The new Jolly light by Melbourne designer Kate Stokes is all about round, joyous geometries. Translucent hand-blown glass forms a bold half sphere, while its solid metal shade creates a more introverted profile in matte black, eucalyptus, burgundy or polished brass. In the wall light variety, this shape hugs the wall, whereas in the pendant variety, it sits at a jaunty angle from straight metal rods.

Jolly light by Kate Stokes was launched at ICFF in New York alongside SIA chair by Tom Fereday. Photo: Mike Baker

 

Launched at the recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York, the light is produced by Australian design brand NAU, which also launched the SIA chair by Tom Fereday at the same event, presenting an Australian design showcase to the world stage.  Read more →

Object Stories: Potter DS Lights by Bruce Rowe

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By Penny Craswell

Designed by Bruce Rowe from Melbourne’s Anchor Ceramics, the Potter DS is a series of lights made by hand in the studio using traditional pottery techniques.

Potter DS wall light designed by Bruce Rowe of Anchor Ceramics. Photos: Haydn Cattach taken for Rakumba Lighting

A simple vertical cylinder of clay forms the wall format of the Potter DS, with a subtle indentation in its body giving it the appearance of having two segments. A slit provides an opening to the light source within that glows against the wall behind. Read more →

Highlights from Milan Design Week 2017

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By Penny Craswell

This year, for me, Milan Design Week is all about The Milan Report 2017, a self-publishing venture that I’m launching along with the excellent Giovanna Dunmall (London design expert and writer) and Marcus Piper (multi-talented graphic designer, designer, typographer and writer).

We’re currently putting together a range of design week Q&As, themed features, diaries, picks, contributions from experts, as well as original photography, graphic design and typography – to see for yourself, pre-order here.

And, while I dedicate my time to that, check out a few highlights in picture form as follows – all photos taken by me.

A string quintet plays in the garden of Casa degli Atellani, where Da Vinci lived while painting the last supper – really! – thanks to AirBNB.

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Memphis: Avant-garde and the celebrity designer

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By Penny Craswell

The news that David Bowie was a big collector of Memphis (over 100 items will go on auction at Sotheby’s in London on 11 November) makes sense – both were on the cutting edge of style in the 1980s and there is a little something of Ziggy Stardust in many of the designs.

Metropole clock, Memphis, designed by George J. Sowden, 1982
Metropole clock, Memphis, designed by George J. Sowden, 1982

Reflecting on Memphis, the Milan-based collective led by Ettore Sottsass that launched onto the international design stage in 1981, it is interesting to note its place in design history.  Read more →

Milan 2016: Ex.t thinks beyond the bathroom

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By Penny Craswell

Based in Florence, Italy, ex.t has always pushed boundaries when it comes to bathroom design, striving for simplicity and elegance while thinking outside the basics of bath, basin and bowl. This year, they launched two new ranges, in both cases commissioning a non-bathroom designer to create something different to go alongside their bathroom products.

Plateau and Raso designed by Sebastian Herkner for ex.t. Image: supplied
Plateau and Raso designed by Sebastian Herkner for ex.t. Image: supplied

In the case of the new Plataeu and Raso collection, German furniture designer Sebastian Herkner was approached to design a range that includes mirrors and pendant lights in addition to washbasin, console and bathtub. An architectural language is created through the use of a shelf that sits just behind and below the rim of the basin, console and bath, creating a functional space to rest bathroom items, while also adding the illusion of a shadow or extra dimension. The mirror features the same shadow, an extension to the oval shape by way of a transparent frame on one side only. Meanwhile, the Raso lighting pendants in pink, grey, white and transparent glass offer a complementary design object that softens the bathroom interior. Read more →

Review: Connect(us) light installation by Warren Langley

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By Penny Craswell

A ribbon of light twists and turns above a pedestrian street in Perth’s latest urban renewal project, Kings Square, this is Connect(us), the latest light installation by Sydney-based artist Warren Langley.

Connect(us) by Warren Langley, Perth, by night. Photo: Trent Baker
Connect(us) by Warren Langley, Perth, by night. Photo: Trent Baker


Warren has been working with the medium of light and glass for over 30 years, creating individual light installations for the Shanghai World Expo in 2011, as well as more permanent lighting displays and public artworks such as a tower made of glass and light at the Canberra Glassworks and Aspire, a forest of sculptural trees in light under the underpass in Sydney’s Pyrmont, as well as major project for Parliament House Canberra, the Maison de la Opera, Amiens, France and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Tacoma, USA.  Read more →

Review: Scented Intoxication exhibition by Lyn and Tony

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By Penny Craswell

Lyn Balzer and Tony Perkins are a Sydney-based photography and designer/maker duo with an international sensibility, whose works are nevertheless deeply rooted in Australia. Their new exhibition at Sydney’s Australian Design Centre, called Scented Intoxication, features works made from a range of materials in two simple colours: black and white. But it is scent that is the most extraordinary feature of this exhibition.

Gallery view, Scented Intoxication. Photo: Australian Design Centre
Gallery view, Scented Intoxication. Photo: Supplied by Australian Design Centre

When you enter the exhibition space, it hits you right away, a beautiful, heady perfume that is not sweet or perfume-like in the traditional sense, but is reminiscent of burnt wood or native Australian vegetation or both. Lyn and Tony worked with French-born Australian-based Elise Pioch Balzac of Maison Balzac to create two scents for two scented candles: L’Obscurite (darkness) is a black candle with a scent inspired by one of Lyn and Tony’s photographs of a sea cave in Kiama NSW. Elise interpreted the image in a scent inspired by volcanic rocks using tree resin, birch tar and red cedar. The other scent is L’Etrangete (strangeness), a white candle with a scent inspired by another photograph by Lyn and Tony, this time of a waterfall in a lush rainforest. Elise interpreted this image of sunlight in greenery as a scent with lemon myrtle, native ginger and hemp. Read more →

Objects reborn from demolished house in Christchurch

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By Penny Craswell

What would happen if you took all the waste from one demolished house and used it to create new objects? This question is the foundation of a new exhibition, book and auction called “Whole House Reuse” in Christchurch, New Zealand. An initiative of social enterprise Rekindle, the project highlights the huge amount of landfill created by the construction industry each year, particularly in Christchurch which is still demolishing and rebuilding after the Christchurch Earthquake in 2011.

Reading station by David Trubridge Design Studio (David Trubridge, Marion Courtille, Mathilde Polmard, Mat Stott)
Reading station by David Trubridge Design Studio (David Trubridge, Marion Courtille, Mathilde Polmard, Mat Stott)


It took seven days for a professional salvage crew and team of volunteers to fully deconstruct the single storey house in the Christchurch suburb of New Brighton, leaving behind only the concrete ring foundation.

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