Illumination is fundamental to create atmosphere, to evoke feelings, to brighten up your mood. At the same time it plays a crucial role, allowing us to work and operate when natural light is not enough or during night hours.
Decorative lights do not always affect the levels of illumination in a consistent way, as some ambient or work lamps do. Their purpose is to celebrate light in a fascinating, whimsical, and often times theatrical way.
A backlit panel or a line of small lights to ornate a shelf can give the environment a particular charm.
When I think of the magic of this particular light I am immediately sent back to Ingo Maurer.
From 1966, when he opened his study in Munich, he started to pay homage to Edison’s bulb; “Bulb” recalls enlarged versions of everyday objects.
There is no material that he has not used for his lamps: from glass to bottles, to porcelain chips and cutlery, from glass fiber to ai led, working in huge sizes.
I think of the hanging chandelier Zettel’z (=piece of paper) equipped with metallic wire where at its ends are attached papers clips with rice paper sheets, printed with aphorisms, images or poems and where you can also write.
With ‘One For Heart’ he invented the mechanism of turning on and switching off light by simply brushing a heart shape and a small mirror where light reflects.
The lamp with Crodino, that many years ago gave me the possibility to illuminate a bar counter, or the famous “lucellino”, a winged lamp with feathers built on a copper wire around which an electric wire is wrapped, are just two of the possibilities of magnificence of this genius.
Ingo Maurer is both the poet and the engineer of light.
I love him and I think his lamps are masterpieces.
I would like to think that a piece of his work would enter in every home, to remind us that not everything needs to always be functional, but it brings us back to a game, to be children in everyday things!
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