Iron Furniture Design · 2022

Light Scars Sheers

by Ruth Bachrach

A' Design Award 2022 Iron Winner in Furniture Design
Awarded April 15, 2022
CLIENT: Ruth Bachrach
Estimated Number of Design Views: 11,414
Verification code 90EAC620E2 · Verify this award

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About Light Scars Sheers

Light Scars is a set of sheer curtains made from laser cut polyester fabric. The text is cut with a specially designed font that keeps the letters easy to read while the fabric remains strong. As sunlight passes through the curtains, the words are projected into the room and move through the day and the seasons. Fonts are available in English, Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese. Customers can request a personal version or choose their own text through a product on demand platform. The fabric is light, resistant to ultraviolet light, washable and can be ironed.

Press Kit

Unique Properties: Ruth's Light Scars is a simple and elegant application of laser cutting technique applied to carefully selected fabrics with a unique designed font which enables the text to be clear yet keeps the strength of the sheers.
Ruth is developing this technique to make it easily available to end-consumers (through a Product-on-Demand application) and interior designers. The user-dweller will be able to use chose their own texts (from poetry to prenup) and apply it in their own space. Ruth develops English, Japanese and Arabic fonts and different fabrics.
This design brings together words, time, space and light in a unique, intimate and personal way. Transcending and merging indoors and outdoors space and the dweller who is a witness and a participant. Our mind and memory are constructed by our personal and collective narrative. Words remind us who we are. Commemorate. Words become a prophecy. Words change their meaning and impact through time. Light, sight, insights change our perception.
Dimensions & Packaging: This technique and font can be adjusted for personal end-consumer use and for a specific project design. Original design is 3600 x 3200 X 0.1 mm.
Tags: Light, curtains, POD, text
Production Technology: polyester fabric / Own designed Font / Laser cutting
Available fonts in Hebrew, English, Japanese and Arabic.
Design Challenge: Ruth challenge was to capture time, space, meaning & love. She intended to transcendent the personal narrative of the end-user into a physical sensation, encapsulated in an ornamental as well as a useful object.
Project Duration: This project was a part of installation-performance, to commemorate the previous dwellers of Ruth's apartment in Amsterdam, a Jewish family who was deported and murdered during WW II. This try out took place between March and July 2018.
Research and production started back in 2016 and are still in development.
Operation Flow: The end-customer has two options. The first one is to assign Ruth to design their own personal version of Light Scars, which will meet their own needs, their space and with their chosen texts. The other option is a Product-on-Demand platform which is now being developed. The costumer will be able to design their own sheers, with the text of their choice, and it will be manufactured and sent to them.
Light Scars is currently available in English, Arabic, Japanese and Hebrew fonts.
Research: Ruth searched for a suitable fabric which can be used with laser technique. The fabric is light, strong, and UV resistant as well. It can be cleaned and ironed.
Ruth designed a font which can be cut out of the fabric, keeping the fabric strong enough not to tear and the text easy to read.
Another Ruth searched the applications of motives in fabrics as a medium to tell and pass through the personal and collective narrative. Light Scars is inspired by the use of written word in architecture as an ornamental and message-carrying element.
Another aspect is the use of written texts as an ornamental element in cultures and religions which forbid the use of images, as the Islam and Judaism.
Ruth was inspired by the use of light of Dutch painters of the 17th century as well.
Inspiration: The main goal is to create both useful and decorative objects which celebrate the personal narrative of the end-consumer. Ruth suffers from ME/Long Covid. 90% of her time she is bedridden. Through the windows she watches her garden. Her Garden of Eden. The days and seasons pass. Light pours through the windows as the sun travels from east to west during the days and seasons, projecting ever moving text through the space. Moorish architecture - The Alhambra. Vermeer's Milk Maid - window, light, simple, daily gesture, attentive gaze, eternity captured. The Koran. The Song of Solomon: Devotion and the loss of the self. The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Shakespeare: Shall I compare thee to a midsummer day. The Persian poet Rumi.
Image Credits: Ruth Bachrach/Creator
Patents: Copyrights belong to Ruth Bachrach, 2021
Trademark (2020) Ruth Bachrach