Designers Andreas Hopf and Axel Nordin were inspired by the operating principle of kerosene lamps, an adjustable luminaire with clever routing of air through an adjustable burner and flue to maximise soot-less non-flickering illumination, for their Laval table lights.
Intent on decoding the kerosene lamp for the modern age, we realised that a kerosene lamp’s airflow principle suits passive cooling of high-performance LEDs rather well. An aluminium cylinder is capped on both ends with polished steel ventilation discs. The LED’s heat draws air from below, past a passive heat sink, and exhausts it through a partially shot blasted borosilicate de Laval jet.
The table lights are named for Gustav de Laval, a Swedish engineer who, in 1893, received a patent for a steam turbine he developed.
