The new Plumen 002 light bulb

The newly launched Plumen 002 light bulb is beautiful and practical, sculptural, and energy saving.  Plumen’s first, ground-breaking (and award-winning) light bulb was the Plumen 001 – the world’s first “designer low energy light bulb”.  An alternative to the traditional 60W incandescent light bulb, it provides a bright, energy-saving, and above all stylish, lighting solution for most spaces where good illumination is needed.

In contrast, the new Plumen 002 light bulb has been developed for places where a softer, warmer light is more appropriate – for example, as they suggest, wind-down spaces such as “bars, coffee shops or your living room”.  I can vouch for the quality of the light that the 002 produces, having seen it at the weekend at the HOME show at Earls Court.

The new Plumen 002 light bulb

The bulb, a fascinating mix of straight lines, curves and angles that meld and merge, was designed so that the light intensity wouldn’t be uniform across its surfaces.  As you can see in the image below, the light is brighter down the two straight “legs” at the centre of the bulb and softens towards the curved edges, creating subtle drama and interest.

Having seen the wonderful shapes of the Plumen 002 light bulb in the flesh, as it were, it came as no great surpise to find out that Nicholas Roope, their Design Director and the creative force behind the business, trained as a sculptor.  Here’s what Plumen say about the design process behind their new light bulb:

For our first bulb, we made a radical departure from conventional CFLs (compact fluorescent lights). Like neon artists we realized that if you can draw with light then you can make any shape you like. So why not a beautiful, poetic form, rather than an uninspiring utilitarian one?

For the 002, we wanted to find new territory to challenge conventions, just as we had with the first.

Through extensive research, play and experimentation we started getting excited about the idea of sculpting the tube, rather than drawing with it in straight, uniform lines. We realized we could create a looped channel whilst blowing the glass tube like a bottle to make a much more fluid and sensual form.

We found ourselves looking to sculptors like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth for inspiration. Whilst their works are pared back and simplified, they maintain an incredible, sensual complexity that make them feel infinite. Barbara Hepworth’s work, in particular, exhibits an incredible depth, richness and contrast in the most basic constructions. With the freedom to create any three-dimensional form we liked, we wanted to try and capture this sense of ‘the infinite’ and this richness and complexity in our otherwise simplistic loop of light.

 

Image: www.barbarahepworth.org.uk

With the help of Texas-based neon artist Tony Greer and product designer Bertrand Clerc the Plumen 002 light bulb was born – a beautiful, stylish, energy efficient alternative to the 30W incandescent light bulb that uses less than 25% of the energy of this traditional bulb and on average lasts up to 6 times as long, but without losing any of its soft and mellow light quality.

With the research and design stages funded and complete, and working prototypes produced, Plumen are now preparing to apply for international certification and hope to start manufacturing the 002 in May.  As with their first innovative product, the 001, their next big challenge is to make the new bulb as affordable as possible.  The constraints of  the manufacturing process and economies of scale mean that the more light bulbs they produce, the cheaper they’ll be.  To this end, Plumen are using the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to generate pre-production orders and funding that will ensure a workable unit cost for the manufacture of the new 002 bulb.  As they put it so succinctly:

Plumen may sell worldwide but we’re still David compared to industry Goliaths. To offer affordable products we need your support to fund the first production run.

Here’s their video from the Kickstarter website about the project:

 

I’ve never been involved in a Kickstarter project before, but I’m just about to add my pledge to the (as I write) 358 others who are already backing the next stage of the Plumen 002 bulb – it’s very exciting and hugely satisfying to be even just a tiny part of Plumen’s innovative, beautiful and energy-saving adventure.

Images: plumen.com