Newspaper read this morning: Dutch designer Aldo van den Nieuwelaar (1944-2010) died and I did not remember his name, but when I saw one of his designs de TC6 lamp from 1968 I immediately remembered it for its elegant austerity… Always had a sensitivity for industrial design which finds it base in living in a commune with three industrial design students (*) early sixties, so another lamp was switched on in my memory by the Milano designer Joe Colombo (1930-1971): a piece of bended plexiglass transporting the source of light through its sculptural curve, designed in 1962. I well remember me visiting his studio in 1965 when I was a young student in Milano and being introduced to him because I wanted to use plexiglass for one of my sculptures. I needed to bend a fat slab of plexiglass and Colombo knew how that could be done and where.
Both lamp designs were meant for a mass market and not for the happy few. At that time there was this utopian view of nice and sincere industrial products to literally ‘enlighten’ the living spaces of everyone… alas they can only be found now as ‘vintage designs’ in exclusive shops of specialised dealers and in design museum… or? Well I should scout for them for my own home but only at a non speculative price for an industrial product (time for a study how mass products are ‘exclusified’ in the vintage design market) … until found as a homage to the good intention of these designers a twin picture of their lamps…
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* Theo Botschuijver, Nico Nijland, Maarten van Lelyveld
the limping messenger 