On permanent view at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is an installation of objects named “Shylight.” Dreamed up by the Dutch creative practice Studio Drift, each awe-inspiring silk fixture is laced with custom software that allows it to bloom like a flower and plié like a ballerina. The lights’ remarkable unfurling came to mind when I first encountered Pu-erh, a ceramic pendant designed by Barcelona-based ceramist Xavier Mañosa for the lighting company Marset. Pu-erh, which shares its name with a type of fermented Chinese tea, doesn’t dance—but its diffuser suggests lustrous pleated fibers, frozen in time, similar to Shylight’s satiny form. Its shape was informed by a conical paper lampshade, owned by a friend of Mañosa’s, that, to him, had the perfect proportions. Mañosa tried to re-create the shade in a sketch, which he then translated into a mold. The tutu-esque result captures the irregular variations of the original, casting a wide expanse of light down below.
An Undulating Pendant, Frozen in Time
Marset’s Pu-erh lighting fixture has a texture evocative of rippling silk, but that is made of clay.
BY KAYLIE FELSBERG
August 13, 2018
(Photo: Courtesy Marset)