Mattson RGB Lighting Fixtures

The RGB line of lighting fixtures, designed by Fredrik Mattson and available through Zero, is playful, durable, and colorful. Available as a floor lamp, table lamp, or pendant fixture, the RGB line embodies young designer Mattson’s philosophy that objects should be well-crafted, timely, and fun.

Trained as a carpenter, Mattson ascribes great importance to the quality of materials and their consequent longevity: “What I have learned as a carpenter is to make things which will last,” he says. In the case of his RGB lamps, Mattson has materialized yet another of his theories—that small objects can be lively and vivid, perhaps even whimsical. Mattson admits he’s “fed up with these interiors in all imaginable shades of gray.” Accordingly, the lighting fixtures come in three color combinations for this very reason.

But it is their globular shape that insists we take ourselves and our design less seriously. Reminiscent of pearls, marbles, lollipops, and bubbles, the round, multi-colored and gold-plated balls that make up the RGB fixtures delight in the perfect symmetry and suppleness of the sphere. Stacked upon each other like some bauble you might have stolen from your grandmother’s jewelry drawer, the colorful orbs demand attention. Mattson claims that the RGB line has “something of the elegance of a piece of jewelry.”

Equally at home in a well-appointed library, where the table lamp can mirror the rich colors of bound volumes; in a simple dining room, where the pendant fixture can imitate bowls of cherries or grapes; and in a dramatic lounge, where the floor lamp can complicate the linearity of furniture pieces, the RGB lamps are a welcomed touch of imagination. For those deeply committed to serious minimalism, choose the RGB fixture to hang in a child’s playroom or above a kitchen island. The RGB lighting can make a spectacular statement in large groupings. For commercial design, imagine the RGB lights clustered in a bar, office, or restaurant. The look might be a combination of Dr. Seussian exuberance and Calderesque balance.

See Frederik Mattson for further info.