At first glance, emandes‘ Swing Safe Chandelier might appear to be conducive to certain gymnastics moves we all become familiar with every four years. But however tempting it might be to loop your fingers around the polished cut-glass and foam-covered contours of this intriguing lamp, however much their tactility might beckon, I’d advise against it, even if the name of the piece does imply that such Simian gyrations could be performed with relative safety. Anyway, the illusion of empty space is just that. The transparent portion of these pendulous pieces is the aforementioned glass–twin sheets cut in the form of a rounded triangle serve as the bread in a sandwich whose meat is the light created by a cleverly obscured bank of LEDs.

Swing Safe Chandelier. Designed by emandes.

Those light emitting diodes seem to be taking center stage this week. Just have a look at the marvel that is You Fade to Light for a taste of the possibilities posed by these low-wattage wonders. As concerns “Swing Safe,” the LEDs open a host of options, creating an assortment of customized shapes and colors. Emandes seems to prefer the “pseudo-triangle” for its textural temptations and implied musicality (they remind me of a bevy of the maligned instrument, hung just so to make music from movement caused by the prevailing breeze), but the Polish company promises that “any number of glass elements can be added.” They also say that “it’s possible to control the intensity and the color of the lamp.” Furthermore, different arrangements are achieved through different lengths of suspending cable, promising one Swing Safe as a simple centerpiece or a dozen as a veritable menagerie of clear glass and colored light.

Emandes provides a further clue as to the great number of options herein. While the relatively safety of Swing Safe is achieved by wrapping the exquisitely clear (and, one might imagine, exquisitely sharp) glass in soft foam, they also offer a more mimimalist “Swing” option, which eschews the colored foam in favor of the hard-edged and brilliant transparency of five-sided solid glass. Which will you prefer?

Via Mocoloco.