01-06-2023

Dutch Design Daily

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Amy Lewis www.1-6m2.com

Light Charmer

By 01-06-2023

A research project to explore the tactile and expressive qualities of combined materials using the hand braiding technique of Kumihimo. The Light Charmer focuses on the interplay between the mechanical approach to design and the intuitive approach where you can evoke a feeling and emotion. Exploring the duality of these approaches allows access into the potential of materials, colours, functions and forms that lay dormant.

If I am the machine, what can I do that an industrial braiding machine cannot?

The freedom in hand braiding allows materials to be transformed into objects through measured choices in colour, texture and composition. Braiding can offer a means to create lightness, transparency and movement with interior and exterior volumes.

By re-imagining the Japanese lantern, braiding is used as a method to sculpt light through the capturing of light in wooden cages bound with colourful paper chains. By day, the light silently obeys with lifeless sorrow in wooden confinement. Yet under the cover of darkness, the magic elixir runs through its veins. The light undergoes powerful transformation as it twists and turns dancing within confinement escaping the binding grasps to cast a shadow of the cage onto the walls.

Amy Lewis recently graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven and works within the fields of product, and installation design with a strong focus on materiality. Her background as a graphic designer enables symbolism, visual language and an eye for detail to be carried through to the latest works.