Designed in 1947 by pioneering American designer George Nelson, first produced in 1952 for Herman Miller, and now available from HAY, the Bubble Lamp is an iconic piece of Lighting history. Produced in an assortment of organic sizes and shapes, these elegant, glowing orbs were inspired by a set of silk-covered Swedish pendant lamps Nelson wanted for his office, but found to be too expensive. Instead, he pioneered a new technique to create them with innovative materials that had never-before been used in the lighting industry.
HAY offers Nelson’s Bubble Lamp in numerous distinctive sizes and shapes, so people around the world can enjoy this classic light in the comfort of their own homes.
“To me the Bubble Lamp is very inspiring, because what Nelson and his team really did, and understood, was that the job of a designer was about taking advantage of the possibilities of their time.
Bubble has always been our lamp! It has always been in our environment at home, hanging over our dining table.”
– Rolf Hay
All Bubble Lamp models are produced in the same American factory that originally developed them in the 1950s. Each model has a steel-wire skeleton on the interior, which is spray coated with the translucent plastic polymer Nelson first encountered in a 1947 photograph of U.S. military ships, resulting in a lamp that is both opaque and transparent as it glows.
