Design Classic: The IC T1 Table Lamp

Designer: Michael Anastassiades, 2014

Details:IC T1 Table Lamp for Flos, £327 from John Lewis (opens in new tab)

If you’ve ever watched a juggler whirling a set of balls, where they sometimes move so quickly, they almost appear to be hanging motionless in the air, you’ll immediately get the inspiration behind the T1’s design.

Creator Michael Anastassiades was so mesmerised by a video he watched of just that amazing spectacle, he wanted to try to capture that exact moment in his design of the IC collection for Italian lighting maestro Flos.

The T1 table lamp, part of the IC collection, takes an opal glass sphere as its main element and balances it delicately on the very edge of a sleek, brushed-brass rod. This seemingly effortless balancing trick is both graceful and striking, hence the T1’s quick rise to modern classic status and why it can be found – perfectly poised – on style-conscious tables around the world.

The IC Lights by Flos embody Anastassiades' angular aesthetic and love of industrial simplicity, with each piece focusing on an opaque globe which is delicately balanced on the edge of the slender metal stem at a near impossible angle.

These seemingly delicate lights appear almost unstable, as if the opalescent ball may fall from its mooring at any time – which is, of course, exactly what Anastassiades set out to achieve.

A brilliant fusion of light and balance, the collection has a refined and understated elegance, with IC T1’s slender silhouette gracefully defying gravity.

Where creating icons of modern lighting is concerned, Flos never seems to drop the ball...

Photography: Jon Day