Bubble Chandelier

jGoodDesign says its pieces are "Living light. Fluently formed." It's so rare that a company really embodies its tagline  (with most of the drivel out there, it's usually a good thing), but I think jGood captures it. Check out the Bubble chandelier for proof...

Bubble is hand made in NYC from eco friendly materials and can be customized to your wishes.

Mod, Modular Lighting

Meet Bud, Australian designer Brad Stebbing's modular, green lighting. As you can tell from the image, Bud can be adjusted to different shapes (great for making look right in any setting, and for a smaller shipping package). It also comes in natural and green color options, is made from sustainable raw materials and supports energy efficient bulbs. No wonder Bud won the honor, from among 80 entrants, of being the next product produced by Hive. 

Modern Nightlight and Kid's Stool

Karim Rashid introduced Bongo in 1999, and I still haven't seen a similar kid's product that competes with it. This ingenious item is a stool and light for little ones. It offers a soft glow, perfect as a night light and comes in a rainbow of colors great for stacking. Get a few and you just might encourage talent as a sculptor or architect. Am I reading too much into this?  On sale for $80 now through Exclusively Home.

Foscarini's Tress

Debuted at Milan 2009, Foscarini now presents Tress by Marc Sadler. The new piece, which is available in three different sizes (floor, table, and suspension) and three different colors (red, white, and black), is made of composite materials, similar to those already used by Marc Sadler and Foscarini in the Mite and Twiggy collections, but with completely different application and results.

LED? Try OLED

Just as LED lighting is hitting its stride, a new version is catching up. Check out OLED, from WAC lighting. Used here in its OLED Chandelier, WAC 's design uses eight colorful, transparent, one-inch OLEDs, including a panel that depicted the WAC Lighting logo. (We forgive the logo stunt only because this version was used as a tradeshow display.)

But what is OLED?

An OLED (Organic Light Emitting Device or Organic Light Emitting Diode) features a thin film display technology that began to appear in cell phones and other small-screen applications in early 2000. OLED screens consist of a series of organic layers between two electrical contacts (electrodes). OLEDs are monolithic, with each layer deposited on the other, creating a single unit. Commonly constructed on glass, OLEDs can also be fabricated on plastic and other flexible films.

They offer bright, colorful images with a wide viewing angle, low power, and high contrast ratio. They can also be made transparent, enabling them to function in heads-up displays and even as window shades that react to sunlight. OLEDs do not need backlights, and screens can be made ultra thin. OLED's color, speed, thinness, transparency and flexibility make it a very versatile display technology.

We must mentio too, that the power consumption is only 0.18-watt for each OLED. Not bad. Now if they could just drop the logo from the chandelier display.

Miss K

Lighting, lighting, lighting! I can't say it enough -- lighting makes the space.

I would personally like to invite the Miss K table lamp from Flos to brighten my living room.

Save 35% on select Flos lighting at Y Lighting!

-- allie

Tags: Y Lighting, Flos Lighting, modern table lamp, accent lighting, Miss K table lamp

Style your salad

A mere 9 hours ago I was shopping at a kitchen specialty store and complaining to my girlfriends about the poor selection of salad tongs. Summer picnics and parties are right around the corner and I was in desperate need of new servers. I didn't want the classic all-wooden ones, which only left me with garish plastic tongs. No thanks.

Instead, I just ordered the Piano Serve Set. They may seem a bit exorbitant at $115, but the stainless steel and wooden design is sure to last for many summers to come!

 

PS -- Also makes a wonderful wedding gift!

-- allie

Tags: modern kitchen wares, wedding gifts, outdoor dining accessories, contemporary salad tongs, modern serving spoons

A lamp called Wanda

From Viteo.

 

-- allie

Tags: Viteo, outdoor lamp, modern lighting, modern backyard, outdoor lighting

Reinventing the box

Veuve Clicquot is revealing DesignBox - its own exclusive eco-friendly gift box. Below is an interpretation of DesignBox by Tom Dixon, presented as part of an installation called "Out of The Box" at Superstudio+.

The design and production of DesignBox includes a number of innovations that also reinforce Veuve Clicquot's commitment to sustainability:
- The box is mono-material - made of just paper - which avoids difficulties associated with recycling and certain fabrication processes that are often polluting
- No plastic lamination (protective plastic film) is used in the box - with inks, glues and solvents representing less than 5% of the total weight of the product
- The paper used comes from forests under management of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), a non-profit organization?established to promote the responsible management of our forests
- Micro-grooving reduces the usage of paper in packaging

-- allie

Tags: Veuve Clicquot, Tom Dixon, contemporary design, green design, sustainable furniture

Modern Crystal Chandeliers

Michael McHale creates modern, bright chandeliers out of old brass and copper pipes draped in dazzling crystal prisms. Often using salvaged pipes, McHale is concentrating on use of fittings from buildings destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He says he hopes that the mix of high-end and utilitarian materials creates a message that beauty is all around us.

This version, The Five-Bulb Compact Chandelier sells for about $1,500.