Bright Light: Lana Launay Turns Natural Materials into Sculptural Lamps
When Lana Launay couldn’t find the lampshades she was after, she started making her own. It wasn’t a stretch. The Sydney-based artist has a background in jewelry making, textile design, and visual arts, and applied a range of these skills, improvisation included, to create her first pieces. That was during the start of the pandemic, and Lana’s has since attracted a cult following for her geometric lighting that evoke by turns lunar landing craft and a homespun take on Art Deco.
Watch and you’ll start to notice Lana’s sculptural forms hanging from the rafters of a chic new hotel or standing rakishly in a crowded gallery. Lana works with natural materials, such as handmade paper, beeswax, and coffee-stained raffia. She makes her pieces on request for clients in Australia and takes international orders through Love House in New York, and sells select designs at Claude Home, also in NYC. Of her practice, Lana says, “I explore the interplay of materiality, form, and illumination.”
Above: Lana created several designs for Sun Ranch, a “California-style” resort in Byron Bay, Australia.
Above: Lana’s Modular Launay floor lamp comes with four different shades that can be configured in myriad ways, The core is a “24V LED COB fixed onto an aluminum bar inside a Plexiglas tube.” The base, like many of Lana’s pieces, is carved by Australian woodworker Sam Creasy. Photograph by Nic Gossage.
Above: Made of washi paper and wood pulp ribbon with raffia stitching, the shades, Lana writes, “offer a playful array of possibilities, feeding an ever-evolving desire for change while challenging the impulse to over-consume.” The Modular Launay floor lamp is available from Love House for $6,500. Photograph by Nic Gossage.
Above: A commissioned design by Lana hangs at the just-opened Hotel Wren, a Studio Manola design in Twentynine Palms, California, on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. Stay tuned for more on The Wren.
Above: Lana modeled her Cells floor lamp after “the hexagonal prismatic cells of a honeycomb, one of nature’s most efficient and fascinating structures.” The shades are paper made from mulberry bark that Lana soaks in beeswax to create a “drum skin-like texture and a warm glow even without illumination.”
Above: Another of Lana’s one-off designs hangs in a lounge at Sun Ranch in Byron Bay.
Above: Lana grew up in Sydney and Los Angeles. The Feels Like Home Floor Lamp, she says, “captures the essence of a home on stilts surrounded by Spanish colonial architecture.” Its shade is made of waxed parchment paper on a base of oiled beechwood beads. Love House offers the Feels Like Home Floor Lamp for $3,200. See a related design, the USO (Unidentified Standing Object) Floor Lamp at Claude Home; $2,850. Photograph by Sarah Forgie.
Above: Made from vintage doilies, Lana’s Kinships are part of a new series she describes as “light sculptures that capture the interconnectedness of family…the bonds that bind us together and the way light—like love—passes through generations.” Each is one-of-a kind and available from Love House.Browse the Remodelista archive for more standout lighting, including:
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