LAMP

Written by James Ward

Yesterday, I saw this lamp in the window of a branch of Ryness in Central London:

I do not understand the psychology of the person who designed this lamp.

I can see how they had the idea. The shape of a lampshade is similar in form to a skirt. Turning the base of the lamp into legs is also quite a simple move. I’m generally in favour of things that look like other things, but there’s something about this lamp which bothers me.

It’s not base I have a problem with, or the skirt/shade. It’s what happens above that. It just suddenly stops.

There’s obviously a couple of reasons for this. One is that if the lamp continued to include the woman’s upper body, it would limit how much light the lamp provided. Lamps like that always have a hole in the top because light bulbs (particularly incandescent filament light bulbs, soon to be extinct, thankfully) produce a lot of heat. Also, in order for it to be readable as a lamp, it still needs to conform to expectations of what a “lamp” looks like.

These reasons are all sound, and I’d struggle to find a way around them if it was me who was designing a womanlamp. But these are also, surely, reasons not to design a womanlamp. It was an OK idea; legs/base, skirt/shade. But ultimately, the idea wasn’t strong enough to overcome these problems.