The new collection of hanging pendants by Form Us With Love for manufacturer Design House Stockholm poses a bit of an existential question. Since the word around the campfire is that the Form Pendants were modeled after the Bauhaus’ surpassing interest in elemental shapes, this begs the question: did the Bauhaus form anything with love?

Form Pendants. Designed by Form Us With Love. Manufactured by Design House Stockholm.

The Fantastic Formal Experimentation of Form Us With Love’s Form Pendants

As with all things Bauhuas, the answer is both stunningly simple and mystifyingly complex. But for brevity’s sake I’ll shorten it thusly: the Bauhaus formed everything with love, such did they love form. From Mondrian’s squares to van der Rohe’s pavilion, the group extolled the virtue of the simple square, the sublime circle, the golden triangle.

Seen through this lens, the Form Pendants indeed hearken back to the Bauhaus, yet they transgress that group’s philosophy as well. Form Us With Love avows the connection: “The idea behind them is simple. Three glass pendants are blown in Bauhaus shapes. They are intended to be grouped as installations.”

True enough. Yet these lovely blown glass pendants aren’t strictly representations of a circle, a triangle, and a rectangle, but rather an exploration of the basic form nudged from within. Such, in fact, is the very process of blowing glass—a gentle, if insistent, pressure encouraging an outward expansion, a literal and figurative growth.

The result is both nuanced and playful—a creative engagement with formal strictures and an innovative metamorphosis into light, that, for my money works well singly or in groups, even as Form Us With Love “encourages users to explore the interplay between shapes.”

Via Contemporist.

About the Designer: Form Us With Love is a Stockholm-based studio that continually strives to “challenge the conventional through design initiatives.” The trio of John Löfgren, Jonas Pettersson, and Petrus Palmé has authored multiple award-winning designs, including the Hexagon woodwool cement board and the flatpack Bento Chair. Even so, Form Us With Love’s real pleasure isn’t in creating the final product, but “the process of thinking, creating and communicating design.”