BENGALURU: Divya Prasanna Kamath, at Handwork Studio, has created a lighting collection inspired by Edison’s bulbs and shades made from origami.
“The first light bulbs were all set on wooden bases and for many years in most homes,” says Divya. “There were simple yet beautiful wooden lamps with exposed incandescent bulbs.” This present collection started with an in-depth research into Edison’s invention of the lightbulb, meant mass production.
“Edison sought the help of biologists to test carbonized filaments of more than 6,000 plant species in his search for a long-burning material,” she says. He finally settled on bamboo, and in 1879 he created a 16-watt bulb that could burn for over 1,200 hours. “Though, the incandescent bulbs we use today are essentially identical to those developed by Edison in 1880,” she says, “reproduction of ‘Edison’ bulbs look different because instead of double-wrapping six feet of tungsten filament into a tight coil, they have the filament stretched out and visible, formed into scribbly lines or primitive shapes”.
The bulb shapes are also “vintage-inspired” like one that looks like Edison’s own prototype. Divya says that one lighting inspired from her childhood is the “Angled Wall light”. “The simple wooden base and an exposed wire and bulb, was reminiscent from those summer evenings, a cool breeze and a bunch of us cousins trying to read a new comic at my grandparents home,” she says.
The biggest challenge, for her, was convincing a carpenter to “even attempt these designs”. Another was procuring hardware and electrical accessories that fall under vintage category.
The studio trains poor women to make a living from the origami shades. Divya started on this after a visit to her relative’s house in a village off Doddaballapur. “The uneducated and unskilled women laborers have it tough,” she says, “when the crop fails due to seasonal monsoons. They are generally ferried out for odd jobs every morning, most often it is weeding out work in farms.”