Mythic Llama, Stone.
A llama-form lamp carved from soapstone. The figurative lamp that proved animal forms can be architecture, not kitsch. Featured in Apartment Therapy, Domino, House Beautiful.
Animal as architecture.
Mythic Llama was carved from a single block of soapstone. The body abstracted to a long oval, the legs short and structural, the neck a vertical that ended in a brass socket where a horn would have started. Twenty-eight inches tall.
Figurative lamps almost always cross into kitsch. This one didn’t. The reason was abstraction. The carver removed every detail that wasn’t load-bearing for the form. The result read as architecture, not as a children’s-book illustration of a llama.
Production ran for two years and ended in 2019 when the soapstone source the studio used in Brazil reformulated its export process. The remaining stock sold through within a season.
Abstract. Carve. Anchor.
Three decisions that kept the lamp from reading as decorative kitsch, and now inform how the network’s designers think about figurative elements in any lighting plan.
01
One material, monolithic
Carved from a single block. No epoxied joins, no painted accents. The stone’s natural variation across the surface was the only decoration the lamp carried.
02
Abstraction over likeness
The form referenced a llama. It didn’t depict one. Every detail that wasn’t structural was removed. The result was an architectural object with figurative reference.
03
Brass socket, no concealment
The brass socket sat visibly on top of the stone neck, integrated into the carved transition rather than hidden under a finial. Hardware was part of the design, not after it.
The principle of abstraction over decoration didn’t go away.
The lamp is no longer made. The lesson (decorative reference works when it abstracts hard enough to become architecture) translates directly into how the network’s designers approach figurative or naturalistic motifs in any project brief.