The Forbidden Fruit

November, 11 2013 • 10:00

Posted inProducts

During Operae, the design festival held in Turin from the 11th-13th October, I met two young Swedish designers called Mattias Rask and Tor Palm, the brains behind Glimpt studio.

 

 

 

 

Their work has taken them all over the world in search for craftsmen and artisans located in underdeveloped countries: their aim is to start projects in cooperation with the local creatives, highlighting their culture and traditions and hopefully contribute to generate more work for them in loco.

 

 

 

 

Their belief in social responsibility as designers brought them to Cape Town in South Africa: after researching and studying the local traditions and crafting techniques (and getting terribly lost in the streets of the city), they got in contact with the Potters Workshop, a small ceramic studio, where they fell in love with “the atmosphere, the smell of wet clay, the clicking sounds of the Xhosa language, people moulding, shaping and painting their works”

 

 

 

 

 

The idea was to design a set of ceiling lamps called the Forbidden Fruit, name inspired by the shape and pattern of the shades, brightly painted with a tactile surface that resembles an exotic and poisonous fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

The ceramic shades were painted by the brothers Ernest and Wendell, two local talented artists of the same age as the designers who live in one of the poorest area of Cape Town, and support their families and children with what they can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images © Glimpt