Can delicate handblown glass ever have a truly practical application?
The British jewelry designer Solange Azagury-Partridge, known for her enameled silver Hotlips ring, a piece that is in the jewelry collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has an answer. Five answers, actually.
In a collaboration with Rebecca Marks of Green Wolf Lighting, Ms. Azagury-Partridge has expanded her offerings in the world of interiors with designs for five cordless, rechargeable LED table lamps. Each one, about five inches tall, is composed of a cylinder surrounding a whimsical motif in glass.
Rainbow features seven arches in different colors and graduated heights; Sun, a spiky red-orange star; Cloud, an ethereal mass; Home, a red-roof cottage; and Eden, a tree in full leaf next to a curvy snake and a tiny ruby-red apple.
Flip the switch and they shine for at least 24 hours on a full charge, Ms. Marks said. A remote control allows the illumination to be set to a glow or a flicker.
Several artisans in the glass hub of Murano, Italy, were involved in their production. The Rainbow, Sun and Eden shapes were sculpted by hand from molten glass in a Murano workshop, using a craft known as il vetro a lume, or lampwork glass (which accounts for slight variations among lamps).
“The basic shape is like a candle,” Ms. Marks said. “I like that shape.”
The idea, she said, came to her during the pandemic and was used in an earlier range of jewel-tone lamps. “During lockdown, everyone was obsessed with putting beautiful tumblers and things on their tables,” she said. “And I thought, why don’t we have a light that is a colored-glass version of these beautiful table accessories?
“I was really interested in LED lights and portable lights, but all of the ones on the market were plastic mushrooms and plastic eggs. So we went to Murano, and looked at all these different colors and designs.”
She eventually approached Ms. Azagury-Partridge with the idea of a collaboration. “I just dreamed of it,” Ms. Marks said. “I’ve known her for years and always loved her jewelry. By the end of the meeting, she said, ‘I’ve already got the designs in my head.’”
Each of the designs is being produced in a limited edition of 1,000; prices range from 550 pounds to 580 pounds or, in the United States, $700 to $770.
Ms. Azagury-Partridge said her entry to interior décor was gradual, beginning about 20 years ago. “I started off designing ashtrays and paperweights as jewel-like objects,” she said, “and then I moved on to designing rugs for my shops, as well as lights and coffee tables, and specially mixed wall colors and hand-painted wallpapers, all of which friends and clients subsequently bought and would order.”
On a recent drizzly evening in the Notting Hill neighborhood of London, the two women and their guests celebrated the lamps’ introduction with cocktails named for the five designs.
Ms. Marks’s 13-year-old daughter, Eden, was asked if she had one of her namesake lamps as a night light. “Not yet,” she replied, as her mother interjected: “I’ve got four kids. They’re all, ‘Can I have one?’ Maybe. Give it a year.”
