The Magic of an award-winning lamp

On Wednesday (July 20th) Irish designer Daragh Enright was suited and booted — “my first time in a tuxedo” — at a glittering awards ceremony on Lake Como in Italy. He was there to receive the silver award in the lighting category at the A’ International Design Awards for his Magic Lamp. The sleek, graceful-looking lamp is named after the mushroom that inspired it — the Liberty Cap (Psilocybe Semilanceata) called a “magic mushroom” after its psychedelic properties — which the designer came across in the forest near where he now lives in Bohemia, in Czech Republic.

Making high-end custom furniture requires travel (to the client’s location) and after two decades of that, Enright had been looking to develop a product that he could make in his workshop and sell online, so that he could spend more time at home. His move to Bohemia, after work stints in Dublin and London, came in 2006, when he met a Czech woman and the pair now have three small children.

The Magic Lamp is an intriguing mixture of craftsmanship and tech-driven sustainability. The base and stem are made from one of eight kinds of wood — “here in Bohemia the choices of hardwoods is amazing, I could have 10 different types”. A challenge in the design was how to achieve the distinctive curve in the elegant-looking stem, which had to be narrow, but capable of taking the cable up to the bulb from the weighted, round base where the light switch which controls its three settings is concealed. The pearl white shade is made from natural plant-based biodegradable plastic (PLA) printed in his workshop on a 3D printer. “It’s a terrible word ‘plastic’ but the shade is actually made from a type of corn that’s biodegradable, you could put in the recycling bin.”

A key element in the mushroom-inspired shape is the delicate “gills” on the underside of the shade — also made of the translucent 3D printed material. Sometime in the nearly two years it took to develop the lamp was taken up learning how to use the software that would enable him to design and then make the shade on-site in his workshop. “When I did my degree in 3D design in Leeds University over 20 years ago it was all workshop based; it was brilliant learning how to use different materials.”

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He came to that course in Leeds from a PLC in Cork in furniture design after his Leaving Cert. That, in turn, was inspired by helping during his school years in the workshops of his neighbour in Kilbrittain Co Cork, the noted furniture maker Eric Pearce.

Enright launched the Magic Lamp on Etsy in January 2021 and has since had more than 300 sales “to everywhere, the US, Canada, Mexico, all over Europe, Saudi Arabia” — the list is long. Such has been the demand — he handmakes each lamp — that he has taken on an employee to help, which he hopes will free up some time to develop other products. Prices start at €235 depending on the choice of wood.