DESIGN: Lighting by Lindsey Adelman takes over Soho display windows

A configuration of Catch featured on the Adelman's website. photo: joseph de leo

Last week, the four large storefront windows of E.R. Butler & Co. in New York City’s Soho neighborhood were turned over to recent work by emerging lighting designer Lindsey Adelman. E.R. Butler is a heritage machine shop where the product lines focus on Early American, Federal and Georgian styles. But this same firm has also worked with designers such as Ted Meuhling, Philip Crangi, and Wendy Steven on cutting-edge hand-made designs.

Adelman, who worked with the fabricators at E.R. Butler on her recent pieces, has become ubiquitous on the New York design scene. She shows at other high-end design galleries Matter and Future Perfect, and her work is exhibited at major shows on the international design circuit such as ICFF in New York, Art Basel/Design Miami in Miami, and Ventura Lambrate in Milan. Adelman is best known for her branching bubble chandeliers, made from hand blown glass and machined brass hardware. These pieces come in endless radiating configurations and use every component of the pieces as a design element including the hardware, lightbulbs to the lamp chords.

The work shown at E.R. Butler was a departure from Adelman’s trademark bubble designs while still using her signature materials of brass and glass. Two of the four display windows contain the Catch pieces, which are consist of glass bubbles that have been blown into brass paper-clip like hangers. These pieces take an organic approach, allowing the unpredictable behavior of the two materials interacting to determine the form. The glass bubbles have a slumped posture over the rigid brass loops, taking on a biomorphic shapes which seem to be pulled down by gravity. The glass has a minimal color palette, and some of the pieces are lit, while other are empty. The brass pieces hang on one another creating a large modular composition.

A detail of Ceres which features small naturalistic details. photo: joseph de leo

The two other display windows contained pieces from the “Ceres” series, which contained fixtures fabricated by E.R. Butler. These pieces are branching configurations made of brass hardware joined by narrow glass tubes, with cylindrical lights where each branch terminates. Each of the fixtures are adorned with unexpected details such as small brass thorns, flowers or acorns. Some of the configurations are at human scale with many branches, while others consist of just one component. Both these piece reflect the distinct modular nature of Adelman’s work that allows the designs to adapt to different spaces.

Adelman’s aesthetic reflects her stated interest in the intersection between the machine and handmade and demonstrates an approach akin to the “truth to materials” philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement. Her designs rely on the fabrication processes such as glass blowing, machining and wiring to create a relationship between beauty of the design and the utility of the materials.

—Kim Harty

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