Lighting up traditional art and craft
Carmen Perera’s lovely home down Ward Place is lit almost entirely by lamps she designed herself. In a range of shapes and sizes, they’re made of woven wicker and intricately fashioned brass, some are suspended from the ceiling, others rest on beautiful wooden stands, Sri Lankan motifs painted along their curving surface.
In fact, Carmen first began designing lamps when she couldn’t find exactly what she wanted for her home. Born in Bavaria, Germany and trained as a chemist, Carmen moved to Sri Lanka in 1995 where she married a Lankan and began a family. Over a decade later, she calls the island home and says its stunning arts and crafts continue to inspire her.
Carmen: Inspired by the simplicity of Lankan crafts
The tag line for her company Glock Lamp Manufactory promises to marry German precision with Asian tradition. To deliver, Carmen works exclusively with local craftsman from all over the island.“I like that I work with small crafts people – you feel like you’re contributing a bit more to their lives and it’s more about personal relationships as well which I enjoy,” she says. Having chosen long ago to take this, the longer, slower route, Carmen says she’s never been interested in churning out huge quantities in a factory. In fact, when she started out many of her pieces were one of a kind.
Travelling around, it became a hobby to spot possible lamp stands – brass spittoons perhaps, a clay pot or the leg of a table – that could be modified and converted into a unique piece. She would bring them back to a friend who had a workshop and ask him to electrify and convert each. It’s something she still does through a network of collectors who bring her antique pieces but she’s also started replicating some of them along with producing her own designs.
While some of her pieces (such as the one moulded in the shape of a hand pump she saw in France) are inspired by her travels abroad, Carmen says that Sri Lanka claims its own niche. “For me, I think Sri Lankan crafts and the old design elements are very simple and very elegant,” she says explaining that other countries in the region can sometimes incorporate too much detail into their work. The simplicity of local crafts are what allow them to be incorporated so effortlessly into modern interiors. “They are perfect, in harmony,” says Carmen.
Carmen has furnished her home with several particularly lovely pieces and she reveals that they were all second hand, junkyard finds that she then brought home and had restored in her own garage.(She also continues to work with other craftsmen and women on individual projects – she’s currently involved in designing some belts with a local foundry.) In doing so, she was reclaiming an old passion for such work. Though her professional life in Germany began with a year spent as a pharmacist, Carmen has long had an interest in arts and design. “I wanted to always do something in the creative field,” she says revealing that she considered a degree in restoration of old artefacts in Italy. However, life happened and Carmen never had the chance to go.
Having learned on the job, she credits friends like Mahen Chanmugam, Anoma Wijewardene and others with providing her insight into how to balance design and aesthetics. “I have loved design from the time I was very young,” she says, “and they’ve taught me you can relate something intuitive you feel to certain proportions you can keep in mind, but I do miss that I didn’t have a formal education. It’s much harder, you have to teach yourself a lot of things.”
Today each lamp is very much a labour of love and can take several weeks to produce. Carmen begins by doing a sketch and then a cutout of her pattern which is used to set the design. Going from one craftsman to another, the stands are carved, moulded or woven, perhaps painted and further embellished before being fitted for a shade. Some, such as the brass domes made of carved tendrils of metal, are incredibly time consuming to make, and can take months.
The artisans who produce them are a beleaguered race – Carmen’s brass carver for instance was the only one of his siblings to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Now, he worries that his son will have no interest in carrying on the family tradition and that his skills will disappear with him.And a lack of interest is not the only challenge – in such smallworkshops, one person falling ill can bring production to a standstill.
However, Carmen has embraced the challenges of working in this context and says she is always looking for new skilled craftspeople to recruit. The final products which can be ordered through her website or bought at Barefoot or Villa Saffron cost upwards of Rs.8,000.
Having discovered that competitors are happy to copy her designs and produce somewhat inferior versions, Carmen has stayed ahead of the curve by offering custom, bespoke work as well as a large catalogue that showcases around 100 different designs.
With Glock becoming better known, Carmen says that life in Sri Lanka has had its blessings, not least that she’s been happy to bring up her children, now 17 and 14, here.
Find Carmen online at http://www.glock.lk
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