Growing up in Jerusalem and Vancouver, the artist and architect Omer Arbel spent much of his time building objects from wood and following a curiosity around construction. After graduating from the University of Waterloo’s school of architecture, he co-founded the design studio Bocci in 2005 after making a glass light fixture he named 14. “When I began that project, I had a very limited amount of time and budget,” Arbel says. “It was the constraints that ended up being the most powerful thing about the work.” His original idea for called for a perfectly spherical light, but he only had a half-sphere graphite mould, so he poured heated glass into the hemisphere and placed two together, leaving an eyebrow-shaped rivet between the sides. The 14 became Bocci’s first-ever product. “I built the whole practice around that experience, to encourage those moments of surprise, in which intention was a fluid thing,” says Arbel. Nearly 20 years later, the Vancouver-based Bocci is now partnering with Aesop to reimagine the 14 — this iteration is called the 14p — in a new sepia hue that riffs on Aesop’s signature amber glass bottles. While the original 14 light from Bocci was designed to be suspended from the ceiling, and a wall-mounted iteration came later, this version is made to sit on a table. It’s available for purchase at select Aesop stores, including the brand’s shops in Venice Beach, California, in Toronto’s Yorkville, and in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, where an installation of the lights is currently on view. Approximately $545, aesop.com/r/aesop-and-bocci.
