The Nature of Light

Prateek Jain and Gautam Seth of Klove Studio combine the delicacy of hand blown glass with the sturdiness of metals to create a breathtaking range of lighting options.

What made you swap your respective professional pursuits for lighting design?

It was a completely intuitive decision, based on our mutual love for quality product design. This reflects in the name we chose - Klove. We simply liked the sound of it; we felt it manifested love, exuberance and a zest for life, which we like to translate into our larger-than-life installations and our smaller, more profound pieces equally. In 2005, we launched Klove Studio with our first décor line, ‘Transparent, Translucent to Opaque,’ a study in how different materials such as glass, mesh, stone and metal responded to light and space. It was through this exploration that we found ourselves drawn to the intriguing interplay between glass and light. The ‘duality of raw beauty’ in the structural cleanliness of glass - fragility on one hand and the endless potential for versatile product design on the other - has since become Klove’s USP.

In our early years, our designs were marked by very simple forms, to which we are curiously returning. We didn’t bring any formal design education to the table, which has made the journey even more special, because we have learned that natural materials, especially fragile ones like glass, have a life of their own. We’ve grown so much as individuals and as designers in so many years of working with these materials.

Describe your style.