Ceramicist Jo Davies and photographer Matthew Booth's amusing Tangle Lamp has a cable management "solution" that looks like the scribbly line above Charlie Brown's head when he's frustrated. And while it might look like a fire hazard, the ball-o'-yarn part isn't really wired up.
Davies explains the design of the lamp to Contemporist:
Matt and I met at the Royal College of Art. He's a photographer and I'm a ceramicist. The Tangle Lamp is the collecting together of some of our aesthetic interests. I think you can see strongly Matt's influence as a photographer on the design through the use of directional light and mine in the form of delicate porcelain flutes that create a swaith of many openings. The Tangle Lamp is the result of hours of discussion and argument over every detail. The result is bold but I think also results in quite a calm object as we made sure every detail was resolved.
We were also both keen to get this sense of tension in the knot and the weight of the object through its suspension. Matt is a keen rock climber as well as photographer which is where the driving force for this aspect of the design comes from. In my practice I design lights and so am often thinking about new interpretations of old formats - in this case we were looking at the desk lamp. In it's original form the Tangle Lamp was literally desk lamps strung together with their own cords and hung from the ceiling. These were in the days before we thought about Health and Safety and only knew we had a cool idea. I have to say, although I'm loath to do it because it's like a magician giving away his tricks, the electrical cord in the final Tangle Lamp is not electrified. But perhaps you already guessed that?
We see the Lamp as a bespoke item which has some special installation considerations. Each context is obviously different and a balance of design with practicality must be considered. It may, for instance, not always be practical to have 12 flutes. A client may want fewer, or even more, so we would have to adjust the design.
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