Photos by Mike Garten

When the designers at RUX finished a recent wood-based project, their workshop was littered with leftover wood scraps and offcuts, everything from Maple to sun-bleached Ipe salvaged from the Coney Island boardwalk. Instead of tossing away the bits and pieces, they decided to make it a design challenge to come up with a product that not only made use of the leftover materials, but made it a central part of the final design. The result is the Stickbulb lamp, a skinny LED light housed inside the wooden scraps that can be painted and joined in a variety a ways.

The Bang series joins three sticks together with a steel 'knuckle' or joint - a fresh take on the tripod lamp. It comes in three sizes, Little Bang, Middle Bang and Big Bang. The Torch is a floor lamp made up of just one stick that juts through a weighted steel base so that it leans forward just slightly. My favorite is the Wall Torch, which can be positioned in two ways. You can take it out of its base (no, it's not hot) and face the stick against the wall to create a soft glow, or you can face the light out and raise the stick up to a 90-degree angle to make a reading light. The LED strips look great alone and in a group, housed in raw wood or painted.