More Eco Lamps

Metaform Studio: Conga Light Starlight Lamp. This handsome eco-light is $600 from MetaForm Studio.

Here are a few more interesting lighting options that feature recycled or earth-friendly materials. This “small plate” post is a follow up to the “Give a Green Light to Eco-Lamps” post I did back in February of 2009.

The Conga Light and Other Handsome Metaform Designs

MetaForm Studio, located in New York City, was started in 2000 by a husband/wife team, architect and designer Khader Humied and his wife, artist Chris Randolph, who say that their “lighting designs started on the streets of Manhattan when we came across discarded sunflower crates in the Flower District. With their varied wood tones and elegant long lines, the crates were full of character and inspired our first light.”

MetaForm uses FSC-certified woods and energy-efficient light bulbs in their lamps. The lights are biodegradable and could be disassembled and burned for heat or mulch. When they use new wood, it comes comes from farmed rapid-growth stock.

They use cardboard boxes for shipping, making sure that they are recycled and recyclable.

The Conga and Starlight Lamps shown here, as well as a variety of other handsome designs, can be purchased on the MetaForm Studios website.

The Cloud Lamp

Yu Jordy Fu a London-based fashion and home product designer who has drawn on her Chinese heritage to create delicate and intricate cut-paper lamps.Paper cutting is an ages-old Chinese art form, used by women to record the joy and surprises of their lives and decorate homes. Yu Jordy Fu has developed this ancient technique to create the Cloud Lamp, which uses eco-friendly reused materials.

Cloud Lamp from cut paper

Ms. Fu writes:

The paper is cut freehand when flat, like creating a two-dimensional drawing, these are then folded and sculpted around a light source to create three-dimensional spaces. I have used this method to make architectural models for exhibitions for many years. I don’t see lighting as an additional element to the architecture, but an integrated part of it, driving the relationship between the solid and void, adding life to the architecture. I treat each lampshade as an individual piece; they are all slightly different and personal.

Pod Lamp from LightenUp's Fairytale Collection

The Cloud Lamp can be purchased at www.jordyfu.co.uk/shop

LightenUp Studios

LightenUp Design is a eco- friendly company that was started in 2004, who, like me, is a refugee from the advertising and marketing field. Lisa Goldberg currently lives and designs in Brooklyn.

All the materials she uses are non-toxic – as she puts it “after all, you cannot use a more earth friendly product than clay!” Goldberg recycles all of her materials, and shealso uses found or reconstituted objects in her designs.

You can find a list of dealers who carry LightenUp Design’s lamps on their website.