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Shoal of hard knocks

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek

Not a day went by in early modernism without Le Corbusier hammering home the idea that we should be living in machines and wondering why aesthetically a house wasn’t more like a boat. At the coalface of industry on a working dockside however, the benefits of modern industrial design were being realised with a far more robust pragmatism. Davey Lighting claims its Oceanic lamp was one of the earliest industrial lights on record, with a galvanised hook to clip it to beams and a guard to make sure that it could take the inevitable bumps and crashes. Viewed today as a design classic and starting at £285 for the small version, the only knock you’re going to have to take now is on the cost.


 

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