London Find: Luna del Mar

The last week has been a complete whirlwind of returning from the UK and moving my home up the street! We got the internet sorted and I’m back in action, as it were. I have a stable of cool people and products to post about as well but I’ve been so busy doing the necessities of Bed Bath & Beyond trips that I  didn’t have a moment until now. While I was still in London it was raining, naturally, on Sunday and so I went to Selfridges to buy myself a new pair of shoes. The ones I had were soaked through after my walk from the Tate Modern. While there I stopped in their home decor area to see if there was anything perfect for the house and came upon Luna del Mar’s porcelain pieces.

As a porcelain junkie, I love all of these pieces and the story behind their genesis is pretty cool too. The designer behind Luna del Mar is Lynne Lange, she is based in South Africa and started in ceramics doing Italian-influenced pieces out of a factory in Johannesburg. After a move to Cape Town she ventured to China to identify porcelain artisans and came upon the Jiahzan brothers in Dehau. They have run with her designs, born out of a visit to Zanzibar in 2004, where she found a sea urchin shell and used it as a light!

Some of the shapes remind me of the work of Ted Muehling. I own a few urchin tea lights – I think I got them at the late, Red Chair, in New Hampshire but they don’t have the undulating sides that the Luna del Mar ones have.

I love that they’re glossy on the inside in some cases while matte on the outside. I think that may be a big part of my love of porcelain, it’s matte quality…that is of course second to it’s translucent properties.

And so you can see just how thin these are – the below is lit from within. Lynne says she visits the factory in China a few times a year to work on new designs. Can’t wait to see which parts of nature inspire her next as the artisans she’s found to work with are obviously quite fabulous!