Anna Karlin acknowledges that while she’s aware of the past, she tries not to remain beholden to it. “Contemporary and the very new – that’s my favourite type of environment,” she says from her airy Chinatown studio. So that probably explains why her work feels so visually novel: as much as one tries to pinpoint influence to another artist, another work, another movement – sure, those curves are kinda Art Nouveau, that floral pattern-y sorta Arts and Crafts – it doesn’t really remind you of anything else. Except for, well, another piece by Anna Karlin.
This month, the self-taught designer releases her first new collection of furniture and lighting in three years. It includes everything from floor lamps to sconces to counter seating and bar cabinets. (The idea for the totemic cabinet, says Karlin, came from studying Scandinavian fireplaces and chimneys – then, she added tiles and climbing-wall-like organic moulds.)
If there is an overarching term to describe – and link – the new works, it would be “sculptural”. A table lamp affectionately called “Squidge” somehow looks soft, stout, and melty, even though it’s made out of glass. Karlin said she “tinkered” with the material for years until she found its final iteration. “Explorations, explorations!” she says. “It was a huge process of getting it right. We tried moulded glass, free-form glass… it was the right alchemy of caste glass that just completely landed.”
Karlin notes that her process begins with the form: oftentimes, she sketches an idea, and then lets the shapes in the sketch dictate what material is used. Her piece “Lantern Stack” features biomorphic shapes that stretch to the ceiling, and when plugged in, they all light up in uniform. At first, she tried papier-mâché, “but it was feeling too crafty,” Karlin explains. “It’s all well and good in your head, but you’ve got to see, especially with lighting, how the light works with the piece – when it’s on, when it’s off. All of that informs so much of the aesthetic.” After a lot of trial and error, she finally settled on fibreglass.
Then, there are the Mulberry pieces, an organic bent-wood lighting series that acts as a collection-within-a-collection. Each item – which ranges from sconces to pendants to floor lamps – features different shapes and sizes, yet they’re cohesively connected with sinewy, spindly arms.
The result is a collection that feels like art: yes, functional and usable art, but art nonetheless. The table lamps look like sculptures, or are embroidered to appear more like tapestries. It’s clear that despite the painstaking effort – and unusually long time – the collection took to come together, it was worth every minute.
