It's time we looked at some recently-introduced wall lights. Click on the name to go to the web page.
Luceplan Cassette
What do we put on walls, besides lights? Pictures, of course! So Daniel Rybakken, designing for Luceplan, thought, Why not combine the two?! The result is Cassette (in spite of the fact that it isn't a drawer, or a box, and it doesn't have any tape inside). It is a square frame with a round panel of light where the painting would be. So it is a picture of a light...which is itself a light... There are three sizes: 40cm, 60cm and 90cm. Cassette can also be used as a ceiling light:
There is an accessory that allows Cassette to be installed flush to the wall/ceiling (see above), which seems to miss the point, really. Like a painting, Cassette is static, whereas...
Ingo Maurer Moodmoon
...is kinetic. Sebastian Hepting has been with the Ingo Maurer team for seventeen years and is therefore well-placed to continue Ingo's ethos. He wanted to explore the interplay possible between LED technology and Japanese paper. They say, "Moodmoon focuses on the individual well-being of people and thus reflects the concept of Human Centric Lightng." Well, maybe. We say it is another square wall light that, in this case, can change colour:
Though Moodmoon can also be round. Moodmoon is controlled by an app and comes with fourteen preprogrammed moods (more will be made available for download). The round one comes in two sizes (Ø60cm and Ø85cm), as does the square one (75x75cm and 105x105cm). The colour changes can be gradual and several of them can be programmed to work in concert, colour moods running through them as an overall concept, making Moodmoons particularly suited to medical buildings and to hotels.
Neither Cassette nor Moodmoon are the kind of light you'd read by. Instead, they add brightness (and, yes, mood) to wherever they are put. The same goes for...
Tech Lighting Mina Wall Sconce
This is easier to understand if you see a diagram of it:
Even now, though, there is something magical about it, because the sphere in the centre of the orb seems to hover and is somehow lit, yet there is no lamp inside. What is happening is that the sphere is crystal and the orb is laser-etched into it. A powerful LED behind is then fired into the etching. Tech Lighting's Mena Wall can also be mounted the other way up. In a not-too-dissimilar language is....
Massifcentral Grand Opera
...which has Massifcentral's signature gold flecked glass shaped into a ring, held by a metal support that comes in their choice of thirteen (13!) metal finishes:
Let me use this design to illustrate a key issue to be aware of when specifying wall lights. That is that many (most?) are placed where they will be seen from the side (e.g. along a corridor), yet they are usually illustrated head on. Thus, Grand Opera would look fine from the side (and from above when seen by someone descending a staircase),
whereas from the side (or from above) this is what you see:
This is not a criticism of this fine design (and it is very neatly done)—it is just a characteristic to be aware of, and which it shares with many other wall lights.
In fact, Gwen and Guillane, the charming sisters behind Atelier Areti...
...are going from strength to strength. Their collection has grown substantially and is a particularly rich source of lights with frosted glass spheres (which they were doing long before ballsonsticks® became a Thing). They are using them in ever more interesting and unusual ways—I haven't seen either of them for a while (obviously!) but I get the sense that they feel they can now have fun, doing whatever they like, and see how people react. For example...
Atelier Areti Floating
...which looks interesting seen head on. You certainly don't expect it to look like this from the side!
But what I'm enjoying now is the really unusual designs they are coming up with as they move on from frosted spheres—the Black Hole above, for example, and also...
Atelier Areti Sunset
Art Deco abstraction? A sunset reflecting off the waves on the sea? Or...
Atelier Areti Linetype
This bold and unusual design comes in six versions. I'm showing four of them above, plus the one the bottom right, with the diagonal stripes, is also available with narrow or broad horizontal stripes.
I can use Atelier Areti's collection to illustrate another key point, one that is central to what we do. If you didn't know Linetype (for example) existed, you wouldn't dream up a scheme that required one. Because of the lack of fine lighting showrooms and media coverage in the UK, most people don't have the chance to grasp of the sheer range and variety of what fine lighting is available, and therefore of what is possible. This is why we keep being asked for the same thing, e.g. for over five years now, ballsonsticks®. They have entered the national consciousness and define what the public think contemproary lighting is, following on from massed bare incandescent light bulbs (which Heals is still full of!) and, before that, factory/industrial.
It is a situation that I try to address with these emails. I can show you what is out there, even if you flit through what I send you in a few seconds (which you can do profitably, because they are mostly pictures with bit of text to hang them on). Maybe something will lodge in a corner of your brain, to be recovered when it is right for a new project. It may be....
Prandina Flyer
...a long wall light which can position a light body 145cm or 175cm (the two available lengths) from the wall. This makes them an attractive addition to the variety of potences—long wall lights—that I looked at in my blog post here.
They look great massed in groups in a largish space, as above. But they also work really well on their own:
I like the wood finish (white oak or American walnut) and I am struck by how these Dots cast their light—in a specific area, through that scallop cut-out.
I look a bit further and discover that these are part of a larger collection.
The various Dots are all Ø17.5cm and can emit light in one of four ways:
And, as you can see, besides the two wood options, they can be lacquered a colour: grey, brown, terra red or green.
So that's my selection of recent wall lights. Do get in touch to find out more, to place orders for any of them, or to discuss wall lights more generally.
By the way, you may have detected another trend. We looked at Moodmoon from Ingo Maurer above. A couple of weeks ago, we saw Nightbloom from Lladró and Moonbloom from Karman. I wonder what's going on? And is there a Moodbloom somewhere out there…?
