This is a good week for lighting here at 3rings. After Alicita’s look at Aqua, an enticing elliptical orb of blown glass; and my profile of the Nastro collection, an enigmatic assemblage of beautiful spirals of Murano glass, today’s post concerns John Harrington’s “A Hundred and Fifty Glasses.” Given the name for this prodigious feat of engineering that doubles as an expansive chandelier, the Brighton, U.K.-based designer can hardly be accused of evasion.

A Hundred and Fifty Glasses. Designed by John Harrington.

The lightpiece is constructed of the aforementioned multiple drinking vessels-each 150 of them suspended from beneath a perfect halo of glass, which is then tethered to a flush-mounted glass diffuser. The effect is rather sublime, inspiring both a sense of astonished awe and jaw-dropping terror at the implied prospect of 150 shattered glasses. But perhaps that’s just my personal pathology (I confessed as much in the Nastro post). In Harrington’s piece, the hanging glasses are uniformly positioned with the business end facing down, thus implying a great unleashing from the heavens, as if some airborne mode of transport (perhaps a catering company of the future delivering the glasses to some celestial wedding) came rather suddenly across a rather large obstruction, thus releasing its crucial cargo earthward.

Thankfully, the bountiful imagination of Harrington seems to have intervened at the moment before impact–putting the glasses to different (I hesitate to say “better,” since celebratory imbibing is among life’s great fulfillments) but equally interesting use. The designer offers two incarnations of the chandelier: “150 + 1” or the doubly-large “300 + 1.” According to Harrington, the “+1” is an acknowledgement of his own humble contribution to the whole affair, referring “to John himself being the final craftsman who has brought together generations of others to crete a truly unique work.” He also says the piece “has its roots in the past but its heart in the present.” I couldn’t agree more, and I’m pleased as punch (or Champagne) to raise a glass to the achievement.