Sola 800 Pendant

David Trubridge continued his “story telling” installations at the annual Milan show, which started with Spiral Islands (2008) and the Baskets of Knowledge (2009), with Icarus in 2010.

As Trubridge describes it:
“Icarus is based on the familiar Greek myth that is so apposite for our times: fly too high and the sun will get too hot!”

Icarus is made up of three large WING lights circling around a single orange SOLA. The complete Icarus installation was purchased by the Pompidou Centre in Paris for its permanent collection in 2012.

The SOLA light is made from 60 individual pieces, which recall the shape of solar flares, and make intricate shadow patterns that decorate the walls and ceiling. SOLA is part of a series of lights in the design of which Trubridge continued to play with the spherical form – which originated with his first lighting design CORAL, and continued with FLORAL and SOLA. In 2016, Trubridge designed SOLA’s opposite, POLA, with delicate snowflake-shaped component pieces.