These geodesic pendants and tea light holders are formed of finely pierced flat metal sheets tabbed together like Victorian tin toys. Using digital acid etching methods, Etch is pattered for the effective filtering of light designed to cast an intricate set of shadows. The collection also features tea infusers.
Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others.
Batch produced, Etch demonstrates Future Industry, where small numbers of high-tech products can be produced in greatly reduced time scales.
More about Etch
The departure point for acid etching was a project to make the optimum light for the digital age, where the pattern could be changed on demand and the object could be small enough to fit through a letterbox for instant dispatch. We initially embarked on a project to make a geometric lamp that was to be self-assembled by the customer at home. The initial launch was through a project that we called Flash Factory (Milan, 2010) – where a customer could either participate in the assembly of the product, pay someone to assemble – or take away the flatpack version. Our customer seems now to prefer a fully finished product rather than a kit!
Etch uses sophisticated Digital Acid Etching methods in a factory that specializes in making extra-fine holes in metal coffee filters, and for speaker grills. We however use the technique to filter light, not coffee or sound. Large sheets of stainless steel or brass are first printed with an acid resistant pattern, then dipped into an acid bath which dissolves the unexposed metal leaving behind our 22 components and the instantly recognizable intricate patterns that will then form our lampshade. The 22 finely pierced flat metal sheets are assembled like Victorian tin toys using folded tabs and slots to create the final geodesic structure. Read more here