Fiona Spence on Spence & Lyda’s efficiency by Editorial Team | 3 June, 2015 Efficiently designed and proudly not mass-produced, Spence & Lyda’s 2015 range is a fun and exciting twist on the ideas of efficiency and flexibility, indelibly imprinted with the hands of the craftspeople involved in their design. Fiona Spence outlines how this range channels flexibility, efficiency, and strikes a middle ground between design aesthetics and practicality. The Suzusan Lighting range is a wonderful example of how an artisan can meets modern technology. The Suzusan lights utilize traditional, Japanese Shibouri hand knotting techniques, isolating dyes to form patterns. The result is a floating fabric pendent light, with hyper textured fabric that allows for a washable fabric, enabling longer life. Porcelume is a range of gorgeous porcelain lights, hand crafted by Collin Hopkins in his Melbourne atelier. Beautiful ceramics such as these stand as useable art; a natural addition to everyday pleasure, that also manage to serve as practical tools for illumination. The huge PET lamps project, from Columbia and the Chimbarongo in Chile, is an idealized example of responsible, efficient design; design that is created to solve problems, not create them. Driven by the wasteful results of the PET bottle industry, the result is a delightful, whimsical and ultimately functional item, providing satisfaction for communities along the way. We see so many questionable practices out of places like India and China, where the quest for cheaper and cheaper products only leads to mass landfills. The Injiri range expresses the history of the region’s best artisans. We need to give these artisans work and pay them what they are worth, and Chinnar does exactly that. She sources the finest organic product and hands it to the best artisanal spinners, weavers and dye masters from all over India, who produce simple but technically complex handmade textiles to enrich the home. Spence & Lyda spenceandlyda.com.au
