Two British icons. One giant celebration. Penguin books | Anglepoise

Two paragons of British creativity mark a prodigious milestone this year, as the Anglepoise Original 1227 Desk Lamp and Penguin Books each celebrate their 90th anniversaries. To commemorate the occasion, Anglepoise and Penguin have joined forces on a landmark collaboration: four Giant 1227 Lamps have been reimagined by celebrated illustrators Anthony Burrill, Rob Lowe (aka Supermundane), Nadia Shireen and Lakwena Maciver, each inspired by the joy of reading. Each lamp will be auctioned online to raise funds for the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, giving four winners the chance to own an entirely singular piece of design heritage.

Lakwena Maciver
Vibrant colour and bold text combine in Lakwena Maciver’s joyful and gently subversive work. Based in London, Lakwena’s work has been shown internationally in cities including London, Paris, Rotterdam, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami. Her works in the public realm have ranged from one of the largest public artworks in the UK wrapping an electrical substation in London, to a juvenile detention centre in Arkansas, a monastery in Vienna, and the Bowery Wall in New York City.

Lakwena has used her bold and graphically strong application of colour on her lamp, with typographical treatment to the shade and base.

Anthony Burrill
Anthony Burrill is an internationally renowned graphic artist, print-maker and designer. His persuasive, up-beat style of communication makes him sought after by big brands, advertising agencies and design schools the world over. He is best known for his typographic, text-based compositions, including the now-famous ‘Work Hard & Be Nice to People’, which has become a mantra for the design community and beyond.

Taking his typically graphic use of lettering, Anthony has placed his initials A.B. on the base and added the rest of the alphabet on the shade, using a signwriter to paint in black his bold graphic lettering.

Nadia Shireen
Nadia Shireen enjoyed making homemade magazines and comics as a child. She studied law at university and then worked in magazine journalism; it was during this time that she started to draw again. After a lifetime of doodling in the sidelines, Nadia decided to pay some attention to drawing and in 2007 was accepted onto an MA course in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Her debut book Good Little Wolf received a mention in the Bologna Ragazzi Opera Prima Award and won the UKLA Book Award. Nadia has been shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.

Her approach is a playful interpretation on a character she would have created for one of her books. The colour pallet is bright and vibrant and based upon the key colours from the iconic Penguin triband book covers. The whole Giant Anglepoise lamp has become the character with the shade being the head, the arms and limbs, and grounded with an orange triband base.

Rob Lowe
Rob Lowe (also known as Supermundane) an artist, illustrator and writer who enjoys working with geometric shapes, lines, colours, patterns and words to create playful, multi-layered and philosophical work. With a background in graphic design, he approaches projects with a sense of humour. Developing deeply personal work with a wide appeal, rooted in the universality of the human condition

Rob has used calligraphic style squiggles applied by pen in black and blue ink over a white Giant. This form has a unique flowing movement taken from some of his flat artwork and is continued inside the shade. He has also reinterpreted the Penguin logo in his style on the outside of the shade.

The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is an independent charity, founded in 2001 by Roald Dahl’s widow, Liccy.
Their founding objective as a charity is to further the education of the public in the art of literature and creativity, by running a museum and literature centre based on the works of Roald Dahl.

Since the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre opened their doors in 2005, they have used the example of Roald Dahl’s creative craft to show that what he did, their visitors can do too. More than a million people have visited the Museum to date, including an average of 10,000 schoolchildren every year.

They think that making stories is part of what makes us human, and everyone is a storymaker. They use their collection and location – Roald Dahl’s archive, in the village where he found inspiration in the everyday – to help visitors unlock the stories we all have inside.

They do this through their school programme, their public offer of activities at the Museum, and through online learning sessions that can be experienced in classrooms anywhere.

As an independent organisation they receive no regular public funding. Earning most of what they need to operate through tickets and gift shop sales. Having been generously supported by the Dahl family, although no member of the family is involved in running the Museum today.

They work with but are separate from the Roald Dahl Story Company which owns the rights to Roald Dahl’s stories and characters.

Roald Dahl and Anglepoise
An Anglepoise lamp sat on the table in Roald Dahl’s famous Writing Hut for many years. As part of his writing routine Roald kept the curtains closed, then angled this light into position so it shone on his work. When the lamp holder was changed, and being lighter than the old one, the lamp no longer balanced, so he used a piece of pink towel and a golf ball, hung on Sellotape, to balance the lamp. The lamps still sits in the Writing Hut in the Roald Dahl Museum, exactly as it he left it.

In 2005 the Roald Dahl Museum opened, and amongst all of the new exhibits was the world’s first Giant Anglepoise Lamp — created especially for the Museum. Today the giant lamp illuminates the work of researchers in the Roald Dahl Archive.