Enter a wood-working studio and you’ll indubitably find a corner filled with sawdust and these rather magical looking curls of wood left behind from the wood-planing process. These curls are the result of blocks of wood being shaved to make them smoother and splinter-free, and more often than not, they’re either thrown away as waste, used as kindling for fires, or to insulate animal shelters like chicken coups. Tom Raffield, on the other hand, decided to turn them into eye-catching pieces of lighting.

The No.1 Pendant is a part of Raffield’s vast collection of lights that explore the use of wood-curls as inspiration. Now these curled pieces of wood aren’t the same as you’d find in the corner of a wood workshop… they’re much more deliberately produced, are slightly thicker, and are much more uniform in their shape and size. Instead of being a by-product of wood-planing, Raffield manually steam-bends thin strips of wood to get them in the desired shape. The No.1 Pendant lamp uses over 40 meters of steam-bent timber, woven into a rather alluring ‘scrunchie’-inspired shape. The wall-hung lamp comes in three sizes, and in ash, oak, and walnut wood variants. Just remember to use an LED bulb with your lamp. You don’t want those thin wooden pieces getting too hot!

Designer: Tom Raffield