+ Education & Experience

Marre Moerel decided to go back to basics for making this light series: “Since time immemorial, humans have been using candles to illuminate their lives. Candles provide light and atmosphere, have been used for spiritual and celebratory experiences, all the while carrying the danger of setting the house on fire.” These contrasts inspired Marre Moerel. She stretches the limits of this most basic of lighting device and presents candles as surprising memento mori objects carrying messages about life and death: all earthly goods and pursuits are transient. Her choice for candles also reveals her interior monologue as a designer: “In our time, making things has become a highly problematic and controversial act: by creating stuff designers are held complicit in polluting the planet. Do we really need more stuff? Eventually it’s better to create spiritual experiences instead of material things.”

It may be clear, this brightly flickering collection carries existential thinking and design considerations key to our time. Moerel’s pyrometric experiments are playfully encouraging us to savour every moment. “Live now, for there will be nothing left afterwards.”

+ Collection

Faro; a guiding light and focal point for contemplation, for those lost in the pressures of daily life.

Bow: a series of balancing candleholders, in both table top as well as suspended mobile versions, carrying horizontally suspended candles. The highly reflective finishes of the brass holder create the illusion of a double flame on either end of the lighted candle. These pieces encourage us not to ‘burn the candle at both ends’, but to take time and enjoy the simple act of being (watching).

A Perfect Balance: a self regulating candle representing life’s delicate balance with all it’s up and downs, and crisis, yet ultimately its moments of perfect harmony. Whilst the horizontal candle lights at both ends, the See-Saw mechanism of the holder allows the candle to return to it’s horizontal position at all times (laws of gravity: if one end of the candle burns faster it goes up as it’s lighter and the opposite end swings down. This lower end will then start burning faster as more max melts due to the increased flame size. This in turn makes the lower end get lighter again and go up, and automatically put the entire candle into the horizontal position once again)

A Fine Line: a horizontal candle that seems to float in mid-air; an almost invisible line with tender flames at it’s extremities creating a ghost like ambience, whilst highlighting a subtle presence of danger. This horizontal candle is meant to be used to create 2D line drawings in 3 dimensional environments. Another Nail in the Coffin and Pins and Needles; this timepiece is meant as a metaphor for life; as the candle burns each hour a nail will drop and create a sound as it falls into the brass holder, to indicate the passing of time. The nails, which are spaced closer together towards the end of the candle, indicate that the closer we get to death the faster time goes, hence accumulating into a rapid progress of noises like the ringing of an alarm bell, announcing the end of time (ie death).

ChinChin and Tears of Joy; musical candles whose sounds will ring as each golden accent falls into the brass holder, to remind us to celebrate even the smallest details in life. Once fallen the revealed everyday thumbtacks also remind us however that not all that shimmers is golden.