Light comes in a seemingly limitless variety of flavors and is emitted from so many different lighting machines — which to choose? If an early industrial yet definitively contemporary aesthetic is what you seek, then Fabulux may be the lighting company for you.
Founded by Paul Merwin in 1991, Fabulux is an architectural lighting and fixture company; according to the company’s mission statement, “the primary design criteria for Fabulux fixtures is function. Function considered with aesthetics then provide the fixture’s final form.” The result is a product line that harks back to the strict functionalism of industrial lighting, combining the elements and vocabulary of early mass production in novel ways. The result is often a beautiful marriage of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art: the Heavy Duty Linear Chandelier, for instance, is resplendent in its cast-aluminum bulb guards. What once would light an assembly line has been reinvented to crown a penthouse dining room table — this is the subtle genius of Fabulux.
The Radius Chandelier consists of six bulbs projecting light onto a translucent fiberglass diffuser. The separation of light source and diffuser serves to highlight the distinct function of each.
Heavy Duty Linear Chandelier by Fabulux
If we were to time-travel back to Henry Ford’s River Rouge auto factory shortly after its founding and told a worker that his lamp would one day be part of a chandelier, he would have laughed us out of Michigan. Such is the beauty of functional design today.
The aluminum dish is perforated to allow 50% of the light to reach the ceiling above, while the remainder is diffused to the room below.
Nomen est omen for the Hexalux, which is a six-armed chandelier mount made of powder-coated cast aluminum. Intriguingly, this mount can serve a variety of heads, which dramatically changes the character of the fixture.
For the full dose of the functionalist aesthetic, the lighting doctor recommends the Tri-Hood Pendant, with cast-aluminum bulb guards set deep under the hood of the socket housing.
Bidirectional Chandelier by Fabulux
A good design is often hard to envision until you see it — then, it is beautifully obvious. Look no further than the Bidirectional Chandelier that combines separately controllable uplight and downlight in one mount.
The last one of this collection is the wild card: Skupina. Bulbs seem to explode out of the underside of this aluminum dish mount. Like with the Hexalux (and all Fabulux products, for that matter) the bulbs can be varied to achieve a variety of eye-catching effects.