By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 03-09-2008

Light Blubs are a series of hand-blown light bulbs made from Royal Leerdam Crystal that literally melt down with gravity or around the objects they encase. Asymmetrical and bent, the resulting free-form shapes give the Blubs a mischievous aura that can be interpreted as a win for the rule breakers.

“Light bulbs are usually such predictable and well-behaved little objects,” Bergmans says. “So to set them free can be quite exhilarating.”

Bergmans’ method is to adopt the virus-as-concept to explore the way a parasitic and uncontrollable force spreads, leaving its trace on her principal materials – wood and glass. She calls it Design Virus.

The idea was borne after spending some time on the factory floor at Royal Leerdam Crystal. There, Bergmans appointed glass as her muse. Not just ordinary glass, but hot, dynamic, liquid glass, which she blew onto and around wooden furniture.

When the glass was blown, it burnt the wood, and in turn the wood’s grain imprinted back onto the wet glass. The end installation, titled Crystal Virus, was the wooden furniture draped and dominated by the glass vases. The glass, now static, still captures the life and the freedom that was.

The success of this installation moved beyond expectations. “I thought I’d just throw the furniture away at the end,” Bergmans says. “Its role was just as a mould and I never expected it to fit so well with the finished vases. Together they work like a jigsaw puzzle.”

It is the self-determination of glass set free that Bergmans best relates to as a designer. “For me, to design is to be free to experiment,” she says adding that strict specifications would neuter her creativity and kill her instincts. Through experimenting she creates installations and through installations she finds new materials and only then can she create commercial products.

“Right now we are talking about producing a few of the Light Blub shapes,” she says, albeit with caution. “But my focus will always be creation.”

A new Light Blub exhibition will open during 100% Design in London at the Fumi Gallery from 18th September to 21st September.

This Sunday, 7th September, Bergmans opens a new Infected Crystal Virus installation, ‘Priveekollektie Infected’ at the Priveekollektie Gallery in Heusden aan de Maas in the south of Holland. It runs until 12th October.

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