Known for her experimental and craft-driven approach to lighting, New York-based designer Lindsey Adelman returns to Design Miami/Basel with a new collection entitled ‘Paradise City’, a reference both to the novelist W. Somerset Maugham and American hair metal band Guns N' Roses.

Found in the fair’s Curio section, which is dedicated to experimental design, the collection takes the shape of an intricate floating web of glass and steel. Working within what she describes as ‘three typologies, Adelman mixes hand-blown glass elements — finely striped bulbous vessels, spiky knobs and trumpet-like extrusions — with an industrial framework of delicately wrought metal scaffolding. Seemingly in a nod to the Venetian glassblowing techniques utilised in the collection, a series of metal pincers were left in situ, holding pinched orbs in place above a pool of water reflecting their forms.

Adelman also claims technological progress with this collection; her studio has developed a method of embedding the light source directly onto the surface of the glass. The new technique allows for the effect of the lighting to remain the focal point, rather than the light source itself.

“My hope with this work is to comment on the all-too-familiar human struggle where we hold onto moments in time – a force out of our control” explains Adelman of the inspiration behind her new collection. “The glass is seen to represent the incessant flow of time, while the structure represents civilisation grappling with it.”