Blog of NYC Bed

Swedish designers TAF have created the polypropylene light in a hand knitted net for Swedish design brand Zero. The lights, called Fisherman, are based on old fashioned glass fishing floats. The nets are individually hand knitted in Hönö on the west coast of Sweden.

Like fishermen’s glass floats, the lamp has also transferred to contemporary materials. And as a useful fishing tool has transformed into a romanticized, nigh-kitsch item used in fish restaurants, it is also time to move lamps into a new positive context. When placed indoors, with increased size and a new function as a lamp, we still recognize it, but look at it in a new way.

Rope-making is now a very rare handicraft in Sweden and it has been extremely hard to find the knowledge on how to knit this kind of round net structure. Finally, a small company, located at Hönö on the Swedish west coast, specialized in making rope- and net applications for the fishing industry, managed to do it. Each net is hand knitted using the simplest tools imaginable.

Gabriella Gustafson and Mattias Stеhlbom have run the architecture and design studio TAF in Stockholm, Sweden since 2002. TAF’s aim is to make ordinary life less ordinary through subtle but effective changes in how products and architecture appear and function. A recurrent departure point in TAF projects is that everyday objects by their very commonness can be made uncommon.

Zero was set up in 1978, the founders had long experience – of glass. This experience lead them to leave glass for a while – then return – and start to make lampshades from sheet metal instead. Börge Lindau, the designer, was attracted by the daring idea and began a long-term involvement.