I-beam brings two, more traditional materials; paper and wood, together with the modern LED light source, and presented in an architectural, suspension beam light typology.
The LED strips are housed on the wooden I-beam in cherry or maple, with an option of single and double lengths. Paper is held to the beam with a steel wire ring and magnet, making it easy to rearrange the way paper is hung, or replace the sheet.
The product was developed in collaboration with us, Hand & Eye Studio and Paper Foundation, makers of fine handmade paper in Cambria.
The idea of working with Paper Foundation was assigned to us by Hand& Eye’s Tom Houseden, when he learned about the Foundation set up by Mark Cropper, a sixth-generation papermaker and chair of the renowned James Cropper mill. The Paper Foundation was created to celebrate paper and revive traditional paper making in the UK from the beautiful paper mill based in Burneside in the English Lake District. In Tom’s view, “when it comes to the preservation of craft skills in the UK is that you have to use it or lose it”.
Photo by Nick Rochowski for Hand & Eye
Photo by Nick Rochowski for Hand & Eye
Photo by Nick Rochowski for Hand & Eye
Photo by Nick Rochowski for Hand & Eye
Learning about Paper Making
For this I-beam light, we are using the mould and deckle from the Paper Foundation archive, as sadly there are no longer any companies making these tools in a traditional way in the UK. Also, designing with their standard sheet size felt sensible for the final production.
Tom Firth-Powell, a maker from the Paper Foundation, told us the British molds were often made with frames in mahogany, making it superior — stronger and lighter compared to the ones in oak or pine usually made in Europe. This reveals interesting insight into the history of the British Empire.
As someone from Japan, we naturally have fondness and a pride in washi paper and have been incorporating it into our work lately. But this project was about using handmade paper from Cambria. We were fascinated to learn the differences between European paper and Japanese paper.
Not only is the forming system different (Japanese style using bamboo screen), but the material and its characteristics as a result. Washi paper making originating around 610 AD, traditionally uses long, durable inner bark fibers (kozo, gampi, mitsumata) and a floating, multi-layer screen technique to create thin, strong, flexible paper.
Paper making arrived in Europe in the 13th century, and they used cotton and linen rags– finely chopped up recycled fabric. And with the development of a rigid mould system, European paper developed their superior qualities in its thickness and smoothness.
Visiting Paper Foundation guided by Tom Frith-Powell
Photo by Mark Slater
Mould exhibition by Proof of Concept at Aram
While still finalising the production, we had an opportunity to show the development of the project at Aram Gallery in Covent Garden with Proof of Concept exhibition.
With the context of this exhibition, showcasing different methods of moulding materials in manufacturing processes, our display was not about designed shape produced in mould, but utilising material made in mould, and learning about its craft. Traditional European papermaking employs a two-part wooden tool, a mould and a deckle, to form individual sheets of paper from pulp slurry. The mould features a wire mesh (traditionally brass) attached to a wooden frame to capture fibres while the detachable deckle frame defines the paper’s edge creating a characteristic “deckle edge”.
Paper making arrived in Europe in the 13th century, and they used cotton and linen rags – finely chopped up recycled fabric unlike Washi papers which use inner bark fibres of plants. And with the development of a rigid mould system, it produced thick smooth paper.
Today the Paper Foundation makes paper with surplus fabric collected from fabric mills nearby, and natural fibres such as hemp and flax. To use the sheet as a diffuser for our lighting, we selected a warmer cotton paper and a whiter paper with high linen contents, especially produced for the I-beam, for better transmittance of light, for the display.
Final object and its mould on display
Development wall
Paper making mould and deckle loaned from Paper Foundation
Paper samples