London-based designer Paul Cocksedge has been a good friend of Moooi for many years. His innovative designs are underpinned by research into the limits of technology and materials. Together with Moooi he spent years researching how to stretch those limits for his latest design, the Gravity Chandelier.
What led you to design, what interests you?
Paul Cocksedge: What interests me as a designer is to be open to ideas coming from any direction. I’m also always sort of interested in like, the invisible things such as electricity, and gravity and magnetism, these types of energies.
How did you encounter Moooi?
PC: I met Casper [Vissers] years ago during a design contest where I was a judge. We clicked right away, like a house on fire. I didn’t know who he was back then, but he gave me his business card and we kept in touch.
In 2016, I designed the Compression Sofa with Moooi. It’s a giant piece of foam with a really heavy piece of marble and we let go of the marble when it falls onto the foam and gives us the form and comfort of a sofa.
What are you working on now?
PC: Recently, I’ve designed a new piece for Moooi and it’s titled the Gravity Chandelier. I wanted to re-engineer the traditional chandelier. Chandeliers are usually made of rigid solid pieces of metal. And so, the Gravity Chandelier is a contrast to that. You have these really thin delicate lines that are flexible, that curve upwards to Crystal components that enclose an LED light and then a really thin wire that goes up to the ceiling, enabling gravity to shape the black lines of the chandelier.
So, flexibility instead of rigidity was part of the thought process for the Gravity Chandelier?
PC: I think the Gravity Chandelier is about allowing the customer to be involved in the creative process of the form of the lamp.
“The Gravity Chandelier is about allowing the customer to be involved in the creative process of the form of the lamp.”
How did the production process go and what inspired you to create the Gravity Chandelier?
PC: I sort of became quite addicted to trying to create this simplicity, you know this kind of re-engineering of the chandelier. And that led to years of experimentation. And I’m not talking about high-tech
experimentation. I’m talking, getting wires and threading on beads and taking things I find in markets and just trying to hold these lines up until they had the flow and the grace that gravity was placing on them.
That journey which has over a decade has given me materials from all over the world. There are so many stories in this experimentation.
You investigated these possibilities with Moooi, why Moooi?
PC: I think what’s really beautiful about working with Moooi there’s a respect for an idea and bringing it to life in the best way possible. Moooi allowed that continuation of research & development and the connection to the original idea, until we found the perfect material and way of producing. And now we’ve landed.
