Cascade

Discipline : Product

Categories : Lighting / Indoor Lighting Fixture : Gold certification

Lladró, a global leader in artistic porcelain, introduces Cascade, its new lighting collection created in collaboration with renowned British designer Lee Broom. Cascade showcases a fresh approach to porcelain lighting – combining the brand’s celebrated craftsmanship with Broom’s distinctive contemporary vision.

Inspired by traditional paper lanterns, one of the oldest and most enduring lighting designs, Cascade celebrates the cultural and material roots of these iconic designs. Dating back nearly 2000 years, early lanterns were made from rice paper and bamboo and were used to light the way during festivals and celebrations.

As Broom explains: “When Lladró asked me to collaborate on a collection, I wanted to explore how light emanates through porcelain and how I could interpret this in a way that evoked another material such as paper. I was captivated by the translucency of porcelain and the nuances from indentations and patterns. This reminded me of paper lanterns illuminated by candlelight so I decided to create shapes and forms incorporating these qualities in a modernist way.” 

When Broom set out to design the collection he first visited the Lladró factory in Valencia. Inspired by the traditional manufacturing techniques, he wanted to push the boundaries of possibilities of the porcelain to create a modernist lighting collection focused on seamlessness, balance and translucency. The collection is formed from simple geometric shapes – spherical and cylindrical silhouettes with horizontal and vertical lines. In its raw state porcelain is unpredictable so to create a product with such precision is a challenge.

Broom also wanted the product to take on two personalities. When switched off Cascade appears in its classic pure white porcelain form, when illuminated it takes on a whole new aesthetic. The translucency of the porcelain comes to life and the colour change emerges as a warm amber candlelight glow. The light takes on a whole new persona, the result of a fine layer of porcelain and multiple LED-configurations to achieve the desired luminosity. 

The collection features three distinct silhouettes of porcelain pendant lamps, all handcrafted at Lladró’s Valencia workshops. Another aspect that attracted Broom to paper lanterns was how they connected, usually hung horizontally across buildings or trees to form endless rows of light. Inspired by this idea, he designed shapes that can connect vertically in multiple configurations, allowing clients to create their own variations of cascading light compositions.

The project in images