Holocene No. 4 Oil Lamp

Design  John Pawson
Manufacturer  Wastberg
Dimensions  W135 × H435 mm
Materiality  Hanger & oil canister: stainless steel Shade: aluminium

Pawson’s design for Holocene takes the notion of the oil lantern and meticulously reduces it to its essence in terms of function, form and palette, as a container for fire, with the means to carry or suspend. Crucible-like in profile, the lantern is fabricated in stainless steel and aluminium, with matte exterior surfaces and a polished internal core, to reflect and amplify the flame. The piece is designed for indoor and outdoor use and scaled to feel comfortable in a range of applications, singly or in groups, on the dining table or a window sill, standing on the floor or hanging from a wall.

John Pawson was born in Yorkshire, in the north of England, in 1949. As Alvar Aalto’s bronze door handle has been characterised as the ‘handshake of a building’, so a sense of engaging with the essence of a philosophy of space through everything the eye sees or the hand touches is a defining aspect of Pawson’s work. Everything is traceable back to a consistent set of preoccupations with mass, volume, surface, proportion, junction, geometry, repetition, light and ritual. In this way, even something as modest as a fork can become a vehicle for much broader ideas about how we live and what we value.