Hospitality Design - March/April 2016 - 93

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rosie li
By Alissa Ponchione
Photography courtesy of Rosie Li Studio

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LIGHT BRIGHT

A lighting designer moves the needle

Rosie Li studied furniture design at the
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), but
she didn't find her true calling until the
final piece of her senior thesis. Dubbed the
Stella Triangle, the sconce is a half-mirrored
glass diffuser that when illuminated reveals
a series of geometric shapes. "I barely
knew anything about lighting so it was
challenging, but when I finally assembled it
and flipped the power on for the first time, it
was magic," she says. "I've been hooked on
lighting design since."
The piece caught the attention of
Brooklyn, New York-based luxury lighting
company Roll & Hill, and soon after
graduating in 2011, founder Jason Miller
hired her as a part-time studio assistant.
Two years later, the company added the
Stella Triangle to its product line and,
after signing the licensing contract, Li was
promoted to a fulltime position as junior
designer. Just last year, she decided to go out
on her own, founding Rosie Li Studio, which
she started in Brooklyn with engineer Philip
Watkins, a former Roll & Hill colleague.
Li has come a long way since emigrating
to the U.S. from Zhengzhou, China when
she was only 3. She lived in Arizona and
California when she was young, but the
constant in her life was her innate creativity.
She spent hours sculpting small models out
of plastic polymer clay before moving onto
drawing and painting, setting the stage for
where she is now.
In fact, she is part of a new breed of

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designers, led by Lindsey Adelman and Li's
mentor Miller, who are changing people's
perception of lighting in the U.S. No longer
merely utilitarian, their fixtures are both
luxe and sculptural, reverting to the days
when craftsmanship took precedence.
"We are circling back to the period where
the focus is on the handcrafted," she says,
with the public "becoming more conscious
of handmade luxury." Li uses brass, a
traditional lighting material, for a more
artistic and glamorous effect. She likes it
either brushed for a satin finish, highly
polished, or patinaed. "We view our lights as
objects in and of themselves," she explains.
"Each piece is a standalone object."
Take, for example, her most recent
launches. There's the Lina series, where Li
crafted geometric forms out of brass rods
and spherical lights that look like space
rings; and her brass or polished nickel
Bubble Cluster series, as the name implies, is

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1. The all brass, eightlight pendant from the
Lina collection plays
with geometric forms.

2. When illuminated, the
half-mirrored diffuser
of the Stella Triangle
collection creates the
impression of infinite
volume.
3. Inspired by soap
bubbles, the Bubble
Cluster series explores
cluster patterns found
throughout nature.

a "bit more like bubbles clustered together,"
she says. Each one pushes the line between
function and beauty. "Lights are hung, you
don't touch them," Li says. "They illuminate
your space, not unlike a piece of art." hd
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Hospitality Design - March/April 2016

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