Milan 2015: Italian designer Marco Zito has created a blown-glass pendant lamp for lighting brand Foscarini designed to mimic the morning mist that rises up from the Venetian Lagoon.
The lower portion of the Caiigo lamp's conical blown-glass shade is white, while the top half is clear.
Each light is mouth-blown on the Venetian island of Murano – famous for its glass production – and the transition between the two finishes is determined by the glass-blower, making each one different.
The word Caiigo comes from the Venetian dialect and refers to the mist that rises up from the city's waterways each morning. Images of this scene were Zito's inspiration for the lights.
"On my way to Murano, I saw this strange mist and I thought it could become a material," Zito told Dezeen. "It just needed someone to give it a shape."
The lamp has a cylindrical base that tapers inward towards the case holding the bulb. The gradient created by the change in the opacity of the glass from bottom to top diffuses the light in different ways.
"Mist is a visual filter, it lightens colours in the sense that it takes weight and consistency off, and diffuses light creating 'soft' landscapes," said Zito.
The light can be used singly or in lines or clusters, for ambient lighting, or as a task light over a dining table or desk.
"Caiigo is linear, balanced and magical: it is not just a lamp, but rather a fragment of a landscape," said a statement from Foscarini.
"It mesmerises owing to its simplicity and its ability to change: when it is turned off, the glass almost disappears from view, whereas when it is on, it suddenly comes to life, with a soft light like that of a flame, which caresses and does not create glare."
Foscarini launched the lamp in the Euroluce section of Milan's Salone del Mobile furniture fair in April. Another fog-inspired light was presented by Swedish studio Front in Stockholm last year.