Cord Sconce
Cord Sconce
A dozen years ago, Brendan participated in a mail art concept shop on Etsy where buyers paid $3.45 to receive snail mail artwork from an anonymous maker. Once bought, Brendan strayed a bit from the typical format and built a simple stick-and-twine wall-mounted lamp out of parts sourced from a local hardware store: the original prototype for our Cord Sconce.
With this prototype, Brendan started a many years long exploration of "tensegrity." A term coined by Buckminster Fuller, who built on the floating compression sculptures of Kenneth Snelson, "tensegrity" refers to structures that are given integrity by having different components in compression (typically rods) and tension (typically wires or rubber bands).
With the Cord Sconce, Brendan wondered whether Jean Prouvé's Potence lamp - already a masterwork of purity and simplicity - could be further simplified by replacing the guy wire with a cord that powers the light.
From its humble origins, the Cord Sconce evolved into a chandelier, then a family of tensegrity fixtures, then inspired other tensegrity families like Pivot and Church, and ultimately helped establish the Studio itself.