June 2011 • In Production
The Wig Light
From the mind of a student comes a commercially viable lighting design.
By Mason Currey
MANUFACTURER
FontanaArte
www.fontanaarte.it
HEIGHT
10.25 inches
DIAMETER
25 inches
WEIGHT
23.5 pounds
Making the transition from student designer to a professional with actual products on the market is rarely quick or easy. Which is why the story of Chris Hardy’s first mass-produced design is so remarkable. Last September, at a cocktail party in Miami, Hardy met a U.S. manager of the Italian lighting manufacturer FontanaArte and showed him some renderings of a lighting concept he had begun a couple years earlier, while still a student. The idea struck a chord: by early December, Hardy was traveling to New York for a meeting with the president of FontanaArte. Mere weeks after that, he was working with the manufacturer to get the light produced for Milan’s Euroluce exhibition in April. “It was kind of a whirlwind,” Hardy says. “Everything happened really quick.” But the design came together in time for the show and, according to Hardy, received a great response. “We think it’s going to be a big hit,” he says. Here, Hardy describes the finer points of his multilayered Wig light, which FontanaArte officially releases this month.
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I was thinking of making the lamp out of fabric, but I couldn’t get the right movement, volume, and body. It was better to go with a rigid material like aluminum. But it still has a soft feeling to it.
There are forty individual pieces at eight levels and eight petal lengths. Instead of making eight different molds for these petals, we made one mold for the longest petal and then we trimmed it to make the shorter petals. That saved a lot of money.
There’s a really nice reflection that happens with all these petals. The light reflects off the back of one petal onto the front of another petal and it gives the light a lot of depth. With the white lamp, you see that effect the greatest. We’re also looking at red and some natural metal colors, but right now it’s just available in white.
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