17 September 2014
Transforming the classics with a few, simple gestures: it may seem a straightforward proposition, but in reality the formula presents a number of pitfalls. All too often there is a risk of making people look back at the original with nostalgia. This is not the case with the Pletz lamps, designed and made by the husband-and-wife team Aaron and Heather Shoon in New York, at their studio in Brooklyn—another sign that the focus of creativity in the Big Apple has now shifted from Manhattan to the areas across the river. The bases of this series of light sources are lathe-turned replicas of bottles made out of wood from a certified sustainable source. The warm and natural light they give off is obtained as in the most elementary of archetypes by the use of a linen shade. As a whole, the lamps speak an immortal language, in which the look back to the past becomes an opportunity to get rid of the superfluous to which the industrial product has accustomed us. The clean style of the Pletz lamps is comprehensible to anyone, no matter their cultural background, making them “international” in a way that only the most authentic of articles made in the USA can be, going beyond specific characteristics of geography and history.