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Design for Spike Light

Design
1998 (made)
Artist/Maker
Scott, Georgia (designer and maker)
Place of origin
London (made)

Georgia Scott is a leading lighting designer. She belongs to the tradition of the urban designer-maker that has been found in London since the early 1990s. Her early-stage sketches for the Spike Light fill three sides of a pocket-sized sketchbook. Unusually for a product designer of our time, these are the only designs she made before she developed the shape and form of the light through hands-on moulding of the material. The finished product is made out of pre-pleated aluminium mesh. The sketches show her initial ideas, with fluted forms developing from the pleats. The final shape of the lampshade came through handling the material, and seeing how it worked and could be manipulated in practice.

Object details

Categories
Designs
Drawings
Household Objects
Interiors
Lighting
Metalwork
Object type
Design
TitleDesign for Spike Light (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Roller-ball pen on paper
Brief description
Design sketch for 'Spike' light
Physical description
A sheet from a stitched bound sketchbook the obverse showing three alternative versions of a tunnel-shaped lampshade and the reverse showing two versions of the 'Spike' Light with a perpendicular rod and lamp between them.
Dimensions
  • Height: 14.8cm
  • Width: 10.5cm
Production typeDesign
Marks and inscriptions
Designer's instructions for components (Obverse: Suspended from ceiling/clear cable 2cove". Reverse: "White cement box/mesh wound round to make dense" and signed and dated: May 98 GSO; May 1998)
Gallery label
(2000)
Georgia Scott (born 1966)
Sketches from a sketchbook for the 'Spike Light' lampshade, 1998
Roller-ball pen
E.991-992-2000

These are the first ideas Georgia Scott had for the shape and form and stand for the 'Spike Light' which was made out of sheets of pleated metal mesh. The fine-tuning of the design was achieved by manipulating and experimenting with the properties of the material to see what shapes it would make and hold. The pleated and double-folded forms reflect and refract the light as it passes through the holes in the mesh and the piece is like a light sculpture, which also casts patterns onto nearby surfaces. The use of traditionally industrial materials was popular for domestic interiors at the end of the 1990s, particularly in loft-type flats.
Credit line
Given by the artist
Subject depicted
Lampshades
Summary
Georgia Scott is a leading lighting designer. She belongs to the tradition of the urban designer-maker that has been found in London since the early 1990s. Her early-stage sketches for the Spike Light fill three sides of a pocket-sized sketchbook. Unusually for a product designer of our time, these are the only designs she made before she developed the shape and form of the light through hands-on moulding of the material. The finished product is made out of pre-pleated aluminium mesh. The sketches show her initial ideas, with fluted forms developing from the pleats. The final shape of the lampshade came through handling the material, and seeing how it worked and could be manipulated in practice.
Associated object
E.991-2000 (Design)
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.992-2000

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Record createdJanuary 29, 2004
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O90458/design-for-spike-light-design-scott-georgia/
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