Truth to Materials?

Our philosophy of innovation at Innermost often ends in odd questions from the studio such as ‘but is it us?’ We usually can’t answer that! A few years ago we had developed the idea of ‘our house style is no house style’. That played well with designers bringing us projects who saw our commitment to free creativity but was less understood in the market by customers who quite rightly wanted to know what we stood for.

Nowadays I talk more of a pallet of ideas and concepts and about the social side of life; creating product for places people gather. I understand it and so do our customers. The commitment to varied innovative design hasn’t changed, we’ve just evolved our language because we better understand our market.

When James Bartlett designed Doric, pictured above, he asked me ‘but is it Innermost?’ I replied instantly in the positive. I loved the idea of a material that isn’t what you expect , a project that presents itself and then has you ask it a question or two. James designed the item to be made in marble but what he sketched worked too well in a larger scale and would have been very heavy and he began to look at other options.

What is really ‘Innermost’ about Doric is the subtle innovation and the twists. You think it’s marble, then you see the detail, then you realise it’s translucent and marble that thickness wouldn’t be.

To realise the project James found a bathroom supplier, they usually make simple curved shapes for hotel bathrooms. Add some interior detail and turn it upside down and you’ve got the basis of a great piece of lighting. There are 3 sizes; 60cm, 28cm and 8cm diameters and 4 colors, polished black, matt white marble, matt pink marble and matt plain white.