Cherry Pendant Light

Designed by Daniel To and Emma Aiston — the Melbourne-based duo behind Daniel Emma, graduates of the University of South Australia's industrial design program (2007), with formative apprenticeships at Marc Newson and Thorsten Van Elten in London — the Cherry Pendant Light began with a childhood memory of novelty erasers shaped like ice cream sundae cups. First shown at their solo exhibition "BIG!" at Lamington Drive gallery in Melbourne (December 2013), the playful sundae-cup silhouette caught the attention of Petite Friture founder Amélie du Passage at London Design Festival in 2014, launching the official edition in 2015. The form is deceptively simple: a conical aluminum shade with matte grained powder coating sits above a mirror-polished steel sphere — the "cherry" — which serves as both the visual signature and a functional optical element, reflecting and redirecting LED light back through a fire-resistant opal plexiglass diffuser to create a warm, dispersed glow free of harsh shadows. The contrast between the matte-textured cone and the high-gloss mirror sphere gives the Cherry its distinctive visual tension — industrial minimalism softened by a touch of whimsy that the designers describe as evoking Venetian harlequin aesthetics.

The integrated LED (updated in 2021 from the original E27 socket) delivers 1,040 lumens at 3000K — a warm white ideal for dining tables, kitchen islands, and living areas — with CRI 80, 7.8W power consumption, and a 50,000-hour rated lifespan (over 17 years at 8 hours daily use). Phase-cut dimmable. Hung from a 3-meter textile cable in black or white. The small model weighs 1.2 kg (Ø16 cm × H37.5 cm), the large 2.5 kg (Ø50 cm × H37.5 cm), both with a 7.6 cm mirror sphere. Made in France. UL Certified for indoor use. Daniel Emma — recognized by Wallpaper* as graduates to watch (2009), winners of the Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award (2010), exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial in New York (2016) — describe their philosophy as creating the unexpected from simple objects using simple forms. The Cherry embodies that restraint: a pendant that makes people smile without sacrificing a gram of sophistication, occupying the rare middle ground between austere minimalism and overwrought decoration.