MANTIS lamps by B. Schottlander

Driven by the same energy that led us to produce the series of lights by the French engineer Bernard-Albin Gras, we are delighted to present here those by an equally extraordinary artist, the English sculptor-designer Bernard Schottlander. As admirer of Alexander Calder, in 1951 Schottlander created the “Mantis” series of lamps. Movement is intrinsic to all Schottlander’s work: an artist, an engineer and in no small measure a handyman, he devised a clever system of counterweights combined with a series of strong, and flexible metal bars. The shade also is unique of its kind. Like an acrobat suspended in mid-air, it is made from aluminium using spinning and chasing techniques that are a part of the metalworker’s inventory of skills, but to which he has brought his sculptor’s eye to create a helical movement in which the symmetrical and the asymmetrical are in opposition. His lights, with their eternal play between balance and imbalance appear to defy the laws of gravity.