Bocci just launched its 93 collection in a sparingly staged Tribeca loft showcase, allowing the visually and viscerally complex luminaires to carry their own. The multifaceted studio and light brand—known for its experimental approach to material and production—developed the made-to-order lighting series by investigating what occurs when molten aluminum is poured into just hand-blown, “still hot,” glass vessels. The uniquely formed results are deft demonstrations of what occurs when two seemingly opposed forces fuse.
As if to the surprise of the maker—those wielding the blowpipes and crucibles at Bocci’s Vancouver HQ/factory—the combination reveals itself compatible. It’s the successful marriage of innate elements, transformed together from primary natural states into new proprietary paradigms. It’s all alchemy.
“93 is a late work emerging from a decade-long interrogation of the relationship between glass and metal,” says Bocci cofounder and Omer Arbel. “By calibrating their rates of expansion, we were able to work with the two materials without catastrophic failure. A thick-walled glass sphere is blown and aluminum is poured manually, producing a fluid metal silhouette”
For the end user, the hardened—yet perceptibly iridescent and formally variable—metal and clear glass work well together to contain the incorporeality of light. The effect is not merely decorative but also evidence of a new tenable process and application, one that could be implemented in endless ways.
“Light enters the glass wall and grazes the metal where they meet, expressing the act of making in a single gesture,” Arbel adds.
According to Bocci, concealed LEDs point downward into the cavities and laterally through the glass walls, while interior metal disks diffuse the light outward. Fully illuminated from within, the interceded orbs reveal their full idiosyncratic make-up; the implicit, almost fossilized, imprint of heat, pressure, and fire at work, guided by minimal yet most controlled intervention. As a result, no two are the same.
To see this and other works from the brand, visit bocci.com.
Photography courtesy of Fahim Kassam and Elliot Black.