World Design Spotlight: Colorín Lamp by Eduardo Albors

“Colorín is a lamp that was dreamed rather than designed. At that time, I designed wooden toys (construction toys, vehicles) for small children, using turned woods lacquered in basic colours and assembled with simple systems such as rods, dowels…,” explains designer Eduardo Albors.

“I suppose that, through what they call ‘professional deformation’, I imagined this lamp in my dreams. I got up and I drew it just as the final result would be.”

Colorín Colorado is a table lamp created by Eduardo Albors in 1979 and produced by the Valencian lighting firm Lamsar. 

Comprising simple geometric shapes assembled and lacquered in primary colours, this lamp, as is completely logical after the explanation given by its inventor, is reminiscent of wooden construction toys. 

As part of the group Caps i Mans, founded by Albors, the designer created pieces for day-to-day use, with pleasant and very colourful shapes. Toys for adults that anticipated the first productions of the Memphis group in Milan, inspired and founded by the architect and designer Ettore Sottsass in 1980 (by way of an anecdote, the name of this group is taken from the Dylan song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”). 

Cap i Mans, created in 1972, was one of the pioneering design groups in Spain, which would later be joined by the designers José Juan Belda and brothers Nacho and Luis Lavernia. The group worked on industrial, graphic and interior design for various companies of different sectors.

This studio, Cap i Mans, together with the group Enebecé (Nebot, Bascuñán and Company) plus other professionals, would be the kernel of the design group La Nave, the real but also symbolic entity that marked the birth of Valencian design as a sound and visible reality. 

“The challenge with the Colorín lamp came from its construction, for which a new material, DM260 compact chipboard, was used for the base but especially for the screen, since, if natural wood had been used, it would have warped,” he points out, with regard to the materials used in the piece. 

“Colorín anticipated the proposals that would arise shortly afterwards with the Memphis movement, where the use of different colours was one of its characteristics. Colorado was an alternative with the screen made from a single piece profiled with a red rim. And Colorín Colorado, they lived happily ever after,” explains the designer. This would be one of his last projects for Lamsar.

Eduardo Albors (Valencia, 1949) has worked all his life developing products for such diverse sectors as furniture, ceramics, textiles, plastics, toys and electronics, but especially lighting, for which he has completed more than 200 projects for different companies in the sector.

From the loudhailer represented by La Nave, he was one of the promotors of the Nou Disseny Valenciá which subsequently derived into the ADCV (Association of Designers of the Valencian Community) of which he became vice-president.

His professional career also includes the classroom since, for more than fifteen years, he taught the subject of Industrial Design Projects at the ESDI CEU San Pablo in Valencia, as well as the master’s degree in Lighting. He also taught product design at the EUITI of the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He currently has his own team and develops projects for various industrial sectors.

Albors’ philosophy for work has always been to seek balance, “the purpose of the product, apart from innovating, is to propose and contribute, to satisfy a demand by the consumer: that of reasonable design. In this way we respond formally to criteria of being up to date and economically to commercial aspects.”

“The Colorín lamp was very successful: conceptually, distribution-wise and commercially,” explains its designer with the perspective given by time. It was a revolutionary design, thought up 50 years ago, that is today, without a doubt, modern and attractive. 

Photography: Eduardo Albors.