George Nelson Bubble Lamps
Nelson designed the first bubble lamp in 1947, incorporating a self-webbing plastic that was developed for military use. It was typical in the postwar era to incorporate these sorts of military materials in domestic products — even familiar materials like plywood had been greatly improved through military necessity. The result for Nelson was a lamp that was safer to produce and more durable than a paper lantern, cheaper and easier to produce than a silk lantern he had been inspired by, and which above all was incredibly versatile and created an warm glow when illuminated. Here's how he described it, and note how self-deprecating he was:
It was important to me to have certain status symbols around, and one of the symbols was a spherical hanging lamp made in Sweden. It had a silk covering that was very difficult to make; they had to cut gores and sew them onto a wire frame. But I wanted one badly.
We had a modest office and I felt that if I had one of those big hanging spheres from Sweden, it would show that I was really with it, a pillar of contemporary design. One day Bonniers, a Swedish import store in New York, announced a sale of these lamps. I rushed down with one of the guys in the office and found one shopworn sample with thumbmarks on it and a price of $125.
It is hard to remember what $125 meant in the late 'forties … I was furious and was stalking angrily down the stairs when suddenly an image popped into my mind which seemed to have nothing to do with anything. It was a picture in The New York Times some weeks before which showed Liberty ships being mothballed by having the decks covered with netting and then being sprayed with a self-webbing plastic … Whammo! We rushed back to the office and made a roughly spherical frame; we called various places until we located the manufacturer of the spiderwebby spray. By the next night we had a plastic-covered lamp, and when you put a light in it, it glowed, and it did not cost $125."
Source: Stanley Abercrombie, George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design, MIT Press (2000).
George Nelson Bubble Lamps
Nelson designed the first bubble lamp in 1947, incorporating a self-webbing plastic that was developed for military use. It was typical in the postwar era to incorporate these sorts of military materials in domestic products — even familiar materials like plywood had been greatly improved through military necessity. The result for Nelson was a lamp that was safer to produce and more durable than a paper lantern, cheaper and easier to produce than a silk lantern he had been inspired by, and which above all was incredibly versatile and created an warm glow when illuminated. Here's how he described it, and note how self-deprecating he was:
It was important to me to have certain status symbols around, and one of the symbols was a spherical hanging lamp made in Sweden. It had a silk covering that was very difficult to make; they had to cut gores and sew them onto a wire frame. But I wanted one badly.
We had a modest office and I felt that if I had one of those big hanging spheres from Sweden, it would show that I was really with it, a pillar of contemporary design. One day Bonniers, a Swedish import store in New York, announced a sale of these lamps. I rushed down with one of the guys in the office and found one shopworn sample with thumbmarks on it and a price of $125.
It is hard to remember what $125 meant in the late 'forties … I was furious and was stalking angrily down the stairs when suddenly an image popped into my mind which seemed to have nothing to do with anything. It was a picture in The New York Times some weeks before which showed Liberty ships being mothballed by having the decks covered with netting and then being sprayed with a self-webbing plastic … Whammo! We rushed back to the office and made a roughly spherical frame; we called various places until we located the manufacturer of the spiderwebby spray. By the next night we had a plastic-covered lamp, and when you put a light in it, it glowed, and it did not cost $125."
Source: Stanley Abercrombie, George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design, MIT Press (2000).