Going back to the origin, no matter if it’s an ancient material or pure nothingness, is something product designer Romain Voulet values highly. Together with Ligne Roset’s younger sibling, Cinna, he created a series of pendant and floor lamps that play with modern technology, bound together by something truly eternal.

The series is named Calcite, after the mineral which is a major constituent of sedimentary rocks such as marble. The white Carrara marble used for these lamps is industrially polished and then placed between two CNC-milled aluminium shapes which are varnished black.

This way the marble becomes an interval, like the silence between the notes which make the music.

And for Romain Voulet, there is also technological as well as atmospherical benefit in placing the disks of marble exactly where they are. The stone diffuses the heat from the LED source and its weight ensures a very particular floating appearance in the hanging pendants.

To me it’s mostly the stunning impression of an ancient, very natural but heavy material, becoming light and ephemerally elevated in the designs of Romain Voulet. The Calcite light radiates an aura of humble warmth, something mystical and deeply modern at the same time.