Design
The search for timelessness honoured by simplicity: fixtures are reduced to their purest and most essential forms. For this reason, for the last fifteen years we’ve been working on the principle of the ‘naked lightbulb’. Simple bulbs make for beautiful decorative elements with a purity and honesty that refers to less hectic times.
Sustainability
The advantage of old materials is that their qualities have already been established. Vergeten Verlichting uses mostly copper. Copper has a warm colour and because it barely corrodes, it needs no further treatments. Copper lanterns are a very suitable solution for outside. Copper is more difficult to process than iron, but that is a small price to pay for a lasting result.
Craftsmanship
Once craftsmanship meant everything, bringing refinement and pride to the final product. You could say everything was custom made. Over the years, the long process of industrial evolution and mechanical optimization shifted this balance to the other extreme. An extreme that hasn't yet reached its final destination. Speed is paramount, 'customisation' is pushed aside by 'mainstream'. If it weren't for a precious few with a love for 'slow production', the old way of working would be at risk of being lost.
Colour temperature
We put a great deal of stock in the visual warmth of light. The new generation of lights has so far been unable to recreate the warm glow of the old light bulb. Descriptions like 'warm white' sound promising but cannot deliver the orange/yellow glow of a light bulb filament, at least not yet...
Pure beauty
Some objects were created out of practical consideration and reveal in a way, the thoughts of the designer. They have a certain 'veracity', something that is rather scarce in our current world, where very often, quantity surmounts the quality. These objects, however, are reflecting a time from way back when, in which everything was slower. They give us a certain way of tranquility. This tranquility we describe as 'pure beauty'.
Innovative with old materials
Working with old materials can be considered a tribute to the refinement of old. Quite apart from this nostalgic idea, there is an increasing eagerness of the individual to set him-/herself apart by the hobbies one practises, the trips one takes, … and the surroundings one lives in. The scarcity of these old materials may make them fit the bill, doubly so because these materials already have a life behind them and deserve a nice 'retirement' in a contemporary set-up.
Light and architecture
We experience our surroundings through what we see. Our eyes capture the light which allows us to create the image we have of an interior. The light determines the colours we see, the light lays down a gilded sheen and casts shadows, the light is reflected. Without light there is no architecture.
