Ballet: A beauty unfolds
The Ballet-series is another addition to Spring Copenhagen’s product catalogue. It’s designed by the architect Poul Christiansen and is inspired by everything from sea animals to dancers. Imagine an open book in front of you. It has its back faced down. The pages fall both to the right and the left, creating an arc or a half moon.
Can you picture it? Then you can see what Poul Christiansen saw when he first got the idea to the Ballet series.
Poul Christiansen graduated as a construction architect. Already during his studies, Christiansen started to take in interest in how you can fold material in different ways. He folded and folded og soon he experienced the magic of folding mathematic curves instead of straight lines.
Folding after mathematical curves was unprecedented in Danish design which is why the technique fascinated Poul Christiansen. So fascinated that he used this technique to design some of Le Klint’s most popular lamps, for instance the pendant Model 172.
The Ballet-series is created by nature
The Ballet-series is Poul Christiansen’s newest design. A series of lamps designed for Spring Copenhagen consisting of a pendant and a table lamp with lamellas hanging in an arc around the light bulb as the open book with pages like a fan. The arch is a result of a meeting between the material polypropylene’s stiffness and the influence of gravity. And precisely nature and its laws serve as a great inspiration in the development of the design of the lamps.
“The form is almost created by nature. Both because it is gravity that gives the lamp their form and because the construction of the lamps resembles the way a flower is put together”, says Poul Christiansen.
Both the table lamp and the pendant have a wooden middle. The lamella’s or “petal” of the lamps are located at the middle or the “bud”. This was the design resembles the construction of a flower. Also, the lamps are flat – until you lift them up by the cord, then their lamella’s fall down creating the shape of a satellite dish known from old metal pendants. This way gravity has a saying. And if you use your imagination you will perhaps also see the inspiration from a special animal in the design – the jellyfish. The inspiration is seen both in the way the lamellas are moving and especially in the table lamp whose leg can be associated with tentacle’s.
The right time
The idea for the series was something Poul Christiansen thought about for a long time, but it wasn’t until the right occasion for bringing the idea to life showed itself that he knew that this was the particular design that he wanted to carry out.
“The two first drafts had paper lamella’s and a string as a cord. When you pull the string the flat rosette of lamellas would rise and become a beautiful shape of a satellite dish. Then I met Claus (Nielsen), who fell in love with the idea and we decided to develop it in the right direction. It took 20-30 attempts before the stiffness of the material, thus the form, was in place”, tells Poul Christiansen.
Classical Danish Design
The lamp-series is Spring Copenhagen’s version of a classic. A series in good, Danish design, classical and timeless style and with an expression that fits most homes.
“A lamp doesn’t need to stand out or be complicated in order to be a classic”, says Poul Christiansen. “Just look at the rice paper lamp. It’s simple and you think nothing of it, yet its design has survived for several hundreds of years.” And perhaps this is why: because it is simple and timeless. Just like the Ballet-lamps shape of a satellite dish. And who knows? Maybe Ballet will still illuminate our living rooms in 50 years from now.
