Ceramicists Are Making Lamps and We're Fully On Board

To survive winter, it's important to see the light at the end of the very cold tunnel—literally. We've noticed a bunch of ceramicists trying their hand at making lamps lately, and we think snagging one of their creations is the secret to brightening up both your home (duh) and your mood until everything thaws out come spring.

Perhaps it's the grounding, natural quality of clay that has these lamps giving us the warm fuzzies. Ceramicists certainly seem to inspired by nature in their work. In their latest collection of lamps, Gabi Villaseñor and Michael Bunsen, the artists behind furniture design studio Mixed Needs in Portland, Oregon, designed with an endangered plant or animal in mind and gave partial proceeds to related environmental organizations.

Similarly, Virginia Sin of SIN was inspired by specific terrain, like Cerro Pedernal in New Mexico, for her lamp designs, which are perhaps best described as art you can use. “I decided to make ceramic lighting because I was interested in making functional ceramics that live beyond the kitchen and dining table. I am also intrigued by shadows: For example, the terra-cotta sconces are meant to cast sunburst patterns onto the wall,” she says.

Then there's Erin Lynn Smith, whose squiggly lamps art most definitely functional art, but look more like noodles than anything in the natural world. They've been featured in an exhibit, “After Memphis: Crafted Postmodern” at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, as well as having been given shelf space at Brooklyn’s Fredericks and Mae shop, but most importantly, they make us happy anytime we see them.

Alongside Erin at that Memphis design show in Houston was another ceramicist turned lighting designer, Jenny Mulder, of Sister Ceramics. We're very into her quirky sculptural pieces, one of which reminds us of a donut—a really elevated donut.

But it seems there’s been no greater success in the ceramicists-making-lamps trend than Katie Stout. Katie, who won Ellen Degeneres’s Ellen Design Challenge, makes lamps in the shape of blobby female characters, which she sculpts in various positions. It was love at first sight for us, but in case you need more convincing, her work has also been commissioned by interior design all-star Kelly Wearstler, and Katie's hosted solo shows at major spaces in the design world like R & Company and Nina Johnson Gallery.

All of these artists have made transitioning from traditional ceramics to lighting look easy, but of course it's not. “With clay, you are working with a lot of different factors like shrinkage and warping. A lot is left to chance when you are hand-building each piece, so being able to get the lamps right for the wiring and electronics was a challenge,” says Gabi of Mixed Needs. All the more reason to support their work, we say.