Lof
BAYA HOUSE Vol. 2Â
On Waiheke Island, Sophie Poelman of Lof knits New Zealand wool into sculptural lighting. At BAYA House, her Harakeke Gold collection, dyed with foraged harakeke flowers, hung in the loft.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Felix Jackson
Lighting is an unusual thing to knit. Where did the idea come from, and what were the technical hurdles in getting it to work?
My designer mind loves doing things that no one else is doing. That’s the fun of it: seeing what’s possible when there’s no proven path. I had an inkling that knitted lighting could be something special, and six years later, here we are!
It was a real journey. I spent the first two years just getting really close and personal with wool. I collected our first 30kg from a local farmer on Waiheke, then skirted and scoured it by hand on my back deck. From there, we immersed ourselves in a material-led design process, exploring everything from hand knitting on giant needles and hand crochet to digital weaving and felting, by hand and machine.
This led to some quick hand-knitted prototypes that worked beautifully. They hung in our house for a year while I just lived with them. I could see the potential in the knitted form, so I decided to focus on it. The challenge was translating the prototypes into a machine-knitted product. We had to develop a yarn and construction that would work on knitting machines while keeping the qualities and charm of the original prototypes. It took almost five years to bring Hiwa to market from our first hand-knitted version.
Why New Zealand strong wool? What does it do with light that other fibres can’t?
NZ strong wool is the coarse wool grown by most of our sheep in Aotearoa, unlike the finer merino wool, which thrives in places like the dry Canterbury plains. Our strong wool comes from a farm in the rugged hills of Wairarapa, and these are some tough sheep to thrive in mud and wind!
There seems to be this bizarre mindset I’ve come across that the finer the wool, the better it is. That’s simply not true. Even the coarsest wool grown in NZ is a thing of beauty and has value, but it’s often overlooked or used for the wrong things when people don’t understand the material and its potential.
The Romney strong wool we use has an incredible lustre and a lovely off-white colour. We love the way it filters and softens light when knitted, creating a warm, gentle glow as light illuminates the individual fibres and passes through the knitted structure. But perhaps the best thing about strong wool is that it’s such a humble yet hardworking fibre. Its superpower is absorbing sound, making spaces feel calmer and more comfortable to be in. That’s what makes it my favourite fibre.
The Harakeke Gold collection is dyed with flax flowers you forage. How do you design around a colour you can’t fully control?
We embraced the imperfection while developing a really considered process that controlled what we could and leaned into what we couldn’t.
No two dyed lights are alike, but we tested and refined our process to achieve beautiful colours while allowing for natural variations between each shade. I love that the colour comes from flowers we forage near my home, from special spots around Waiheke Island.
There are so many variables, from the time of harvest and year to the exact location where the plants grow. Some of our early shades came out too purple, orange or pink, but they were still pleasing to the eye. For Harakeke Gold, though, we had a particular shade in mind and were quite strict about achieving that vision. We dyed many pieces and chose to offer only the colours that fitted it.
Your work hangs in the loft and is best seen from the bed of cushions below. How does looking up change the way people experience a knitted form?
Hiwa is our only design with a semi-concealed underside. When you look up, you see the knit framed by two circular rings, with little glimpses of the lightbulb and our wooden flower frame peeking through. I love round forms, and I find the circular view from below quite calming. It makes Hiwa particularly suited to high ceilings and spaces like stairwells, where you might experience the light from below rather than from the side.
Wool overhead, wool underfoot. What conversation did you want your lights to have with the BAYA rug?
Our Hiwa and Bloem wool lights are such a natural match for this BAYA wool rug! This particular rug feels classic and timeless, yet interesting and never generic, much like our lights. The warm brown and natural white tones work beautifully with our Natural White and Harakeke Gold brown colours. I think all homes should have wool on the floor, overhead, on the couch and on the walls! Wool brings warmth and texture, bringing everything together and grounding a room.