Tag Archives: NYCxDesign

Design

Eye On Design: Foscarini’s Lumiere Table Lamp

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lumière table lamp photo by gail worley
Photos By Gail

Foscarini, a leading Italian design and manufacturing company that produces masterful and innovative decorative lighting, is one of my favorite showrooms to visit in NYC’s SoHo design district. The company was founded in 1981 on the famous glass-blowing island of Murano in Venice, Italy, and their award-winning and iconic designs are the results of passionate collaboration with world-class designers. To create light is the central vision of each Foscarini project, never losing sight of the connection between the form and the function of illumination.

One of my favorite designs of theirs is the Lumiere Table Lamp, which was created for Foscarini by Milanese architect and designer Rodolfo Dordoni. The Lumiere has an elegant gradation of tones in the glossy finish of its blown glass shade contrasted with the finish of the characteristic tripod base.  This light is both beautiful and beautifully crafted. It has a elegant look and emits a soft light. Each of the elements, the glass shade and the metal stand, are well made and have a nice weight — which, with a table lamp, is a desirable. This is a classic lamp that will complement the decor of virtually any room. The blown glass shade comes in your choice of colors that include Polished Cherry (shown), Polished Turquoise and Warm White, with metal-base finishes of Champagne (shown), Aluminum, and Black Chrome. The Lumiere comes in small and large sizes, with this small size lamp retailing for $727.00.

lumière table lamp by foscarini photo by gail worley
Shown Here with The Lumiere XX Table Lamp

Design

Pink Think of The Day: Pink Metallic Mesh Dress

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Pink Metallic Mesh Dress
Photos By Gail

I saw this fabulous Pink Metallic Mesh Dress in a shop on Greene Street in SoHo when I was party-hopping during the Open Showrooms evening that closes out the two-week long NYCxDesign event.

Pink Metallic Mesh Dress Detail

Here’s a detail shot of the mesh that I managed to get, even though at this point I was already too tipsy to remember to note the name of the store I was in. Oops.

Pink Metallic Mesh Dress

The camera roll on my phone tells me that pictures of the dress were taken at 31 1/2 Greene Street, but I looked up that address and I am pretty sure it was south of that exact location. It sure is a great-looking dress. I would wear it.

Update 10/19/19: The store is called The Webster and it’s located at 29 Greene Street!

Design

Eye On Design: Orbital Floor Lamp By Ferruccio Laviani for Foscarini

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All Photos By Gail

Every Spring, NYCxDesign runs for two weeks leading up to the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair), but the Saturday evening prior to the kick off of ICFF is a festive night of open showrooms down in SoHo. Anyone who’s been to Open Showrooms knows that it means one thing; parties, and one of the best parties is hosted by Italian lighting designers Foscarini, which is where I like to start my evening. This year, I was completely smitten by Foscarini’s Orbital Floor Lamp, by architect and designer Ferruccio Laviani. The Orbital lamp pairs mid-century modern shapes with soft illumination to create a playful lamp for bold, contemporary interiors.

Orbital Floor Lamp Installation View

The Orbital Floor Lamp, a 1992 design by Laviani, features five glass shapes with large screw details. The glass shapes are individually backlit. Constructed of polished metal and silk screen-printed glass, the Orbital makes a timeless statement. Shown here in a multicolored lacquered finish, it is also available in white.

Orbital Floor Lamp

The Orbital Floor Lamp has a price point of $2,026.00 and is available online through a variety of outlets, or at any Foscarini Store globally.

Orbital Floor Lamp Detail

Design

Eye On Design: Foscarini’s Light Bulb Series By James Wines / SITE

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Inversion Room Inside
Immersive Reverse Room Installation at Foscarini Showroom Featuring The Light Bulb Series (All Photos By Gail)

NYCxDESIGN is New York City’s annual showcase of all things Design-related! Must-attend events include a Saturday evening (May 19th) filled with parties hosted by dozens of SoHo showrooms, where you can get caught up on all the latest trends in furniture and lighting while eating and drinking yourself into a stupor. It’s all kinds of crazy fun. We saw a ton of cool stuff this year, but I think we had the best time at one of the evening’s early stops, the showroom of Italian Lighting experts, Foscarini, which is located on Greene Street right in the center of all the hot design action!

Reverse Room Full View

On this evening, Foscarini were celebrating the launch of The Light Bulb Series, by Architect/Designer James Wines in association with SITE— the architecture and environmental arts studio that he founded in New York City in 1970.

Light Bulb Series
The Light Bulb Series on Display in the Foscarini Showroom

The Light Bulb Series is a designer art-house collection consisting of a limited and numbered edition of pieces – based on a reflection of the light bulb as an archetype, with its typical bulb-like shape, produced in a series of surprising provocations, as follows:

White Light

Black Light

Melting Light

Candle Light

Plant Light

James Wines translates this reflection with explorations that revolve around the principal themes that have always guided his architectural research. These are inversion, dissolution, nature, all those statuses of “architectural flaw” which make it possible to rethink reality, giving it shape and then at the same time breaking down its boundaries. Wines’s light bulbs are in turn melted, broken, inverted, turned black, and invaded by nature. A propensity towards experimentation, doing better but also doing differently, which has always animated Foscarini as well.

Plant Light and Black Light

White Melting Candle Light

Reverse Room

The focal point of the party however was Wine’s Reverse Room installation, which he designed together with his daughter Suzan Wines, both of whom were in attendance for the evening.

Reverse Room Table

The endlessly Instagrammable Reverse Room was devised to emphasise the surreal quality of these experimentations: in a dark-walled room, upside down and slanted, with monochrome tables and chairs, the table lamps blink down from the ceiling, whereas the suspension lamps peep out from the floor.

Reverse Room Suspended Bulbs

It is an invitation to think of a world, of design, and therefore of what is possible, where it is always imaginable to shed light differently.

Light Bulb Series Card

Visit Foscarini’s website at This Link for more information on The light Bulb Series and other Foscarini Lighting Designs!

Plant Light and Black Light

Design

Pink Thing of The Day: Pink Shopping Bag From the 99 Cent Store

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Pink Shopping Bag
Photo By Gail

It had been raining in Manhattan for three days straight when we got a slight reprieve on Saturday evening. As I exited the subway at the corner of Spring and Lafayette Streets in Soho, I could not miss this rather oversized Bright Pink Shopping Bag, which had been discarded on the sidewalk, irresponsibly short of the garbage bin. No one likes a Litterbug.

Pink Shopping Bag
Big Pink Shopping Bag, Detail

Mostly, looking at this impossibly compelling bag made me want to locate the Great Buy! 99 Cent store, and do some bargain shopping. Instead, I carried on to my evening’s destination of various NYCxDesign Parties, where I had a ton of fun and got drunk for free!

Note: It has come to my attention that this bag came from an Arizona Iced Tea Promotional Pop Up Shop, which was happening on Nearby Crosby Street from May 16th to May 21st.