When we had our daughter lots of friends gave us a Richard Hutten "Dumbo" drinking cup where the function of holding the object slightly overtakes the function of holding liquid. Our daughter quickly learned to handle other less grippier cups, but the "Dumbos" stayed fascinating - but also out of use ... until…

I have always been fascinated with Castiglioni’s string lamp "Parentesi". Also Gricic’s rework a few years back I always liked. One day it hit me that Dumbo’s ear could feed a rope through its ears like a buckle. A GU10 LED spot will not get too hot and will perfectly sink into the cup. If one chops one ear of another cup (we had a couple) one can make a hanger and pouring a bit of concrete into the other half a counter weight to keep the cable under tension.
Dumbo could finally fly and become the lamp I wanted to have.

2020