Mantis BS8 Floor lamp metal black / 1951 reissue - Adjustable - H 160 cm - DCW éditions

Designer Bernard Schottlander (1924-1994) forged a name for himself with his monumental sculptures, created in his London studio. Metalwork lecturer at St. Martins School, Schottlander donned his welder, designer and engineer hats all at once in 1951 to design a lighting series that he would eventually christen as "Mantis". He would make 30 units, all crafted by hand and sold exclusively in his London studio or by a single retailer in Zurich. The Mantis lights have now be relaunched, in a design release sure to delight collectors and lovers of industrial design. Designer-sculptor Bernard Schottlander was a huge admirer of Alexander Calder. Movement is a great source of inspiration in all of Schottlander's work. His lights play on the tension between balance and unbalance, like mobiles that seem to defy the laws of gravity. The poetry of the piece invites us to dream… Extremely stable whilst also offering mobile and high-performance lighting, the Mantis lights have been designed to be highly precise mechanisms. Being both an artist and an engineer, Bernard Schottlander has developed a nifty counterweight-pivot system, using fine, supple and ultra-resistant metal rods. This floor lamp features a 360° rotating base that can be titled (base adjusted via a wheel). The adjustable lampshade mean you can precisely direct the light in any direction. A wired silhouette naturally evoking images of a praying mantis while retaining a weightless look, the Mantis floor lamp has been structurally modified and optimised by DCW, as Schottlander had envisaged himself. Playing on balanced and unbalanced tension, still composed of a long steel rod topped with a pivoting ball-joint lampshade, and still placed on its round base, the BS8 floor lamp has had a change of stem, swapping its original counterweight-rack for an ingenious quadrature of the circle with suggestive graphic elements and hollow volumes. A true sculpture that can now be adjusted via a wheel mechanism, Mantis BS8 has added the feather of modularity to its cap, thanks to its versatility in use.