Happy Birthday Socialight!

One year ago today we launched our fabulous blog – The Socialight.  Our first blog post was written by our Owner/CEO, Jay Sweet… and it spoke to some of the new branding we were doing for our 91 year old company (which included this blog).  Looking back over our 33 blog posts made me realize – it’s been a pretty fun year at Boyd!  To celebrate The Socialight’s first birthday I thought I’d walk you through some of my favorite posts:

The Bold & The Beautiful: Boyd Lighting’s New Products At NeoCon 2012

We’re serious about creating really beautiful, high-quality lighting fixtures… but that doesn’t mean we have to BE serious when talking about them.  I wrote this post like a soap opera, and reading it again made me smile.  This post is full of cheesy lines like: “Newton Jr. was separated from his father during a camping trip, and was raised by a pack of wolves”.  Oh yeah… that’s good stuff!

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Vanilla Ice: Light Fixture Designer?

Alright stop, collaborate and listen.  Ice is back with a brand new invention… lighting fixtures.  That’s right – Vanilla Ice is getting into the lighting game by partnering with Capitol Lighting to create his own line of pendants and sconces.  Vanilla has his own home remodeling show on the DIY Network called The Vanilla Ice Project… so I guess designing light fixtures was the obvious next step. 

I have to be honest – I was intrigued when I heard Vanilla Ice was designing light fixtures… I had visions of modern fixtures with plenty of “ice” dancing in my head.  Instead – I found fixtures that look like they were designed by a nonagenarian:

Vanilla Ice Premier Collection. Image from Capitol Lighting website.

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2013 San Francisco Decorator Showcase

The San Francisco Decorator Showcase at Herbst Manor opened to the public this past weekend.  For those of you not familiar with the SF Decorator Showcase here’s the rundown:  Each year a ridiculously amazing house is selected to be renovated by some of the best architects and interior designers on the left coast.

This year’s project, Herbst Manor, was originally designed to look like a “Mini-Versailles”.  Which puts the floor to ceiling mirrors in nearly every room into some sort of context.  It’s definitely a narcissistic eccentric way of paying homage to Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.  To each their own.

Photo by: Michael David Rose/MDRP.NET

27 top designers are breathing new life into this 12.5 million dollar home… but I’m going to focus on one designer in this post – and that’s Chambers + Chambers Architects in Mill Valley, California – who features two of our fixtures: the Linea sconce and our gorgeous new Asteroid pendant!

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Party With Boyd & Roger Thomas in Vegas!

Roger Thomas

In a few weeks Boyd Lighting will be headed down to the Hospitality Design Show in Las Vegas to party with Roger Thomas.  If you, reader, don’t know the man let me explain how cool this is… Titan of design, Mr. Thomas, is a member of Architectural Digest’s AD 100 and has won every award the resort/hospitality industry has to offer.  In addition to his credentials, Roger is a Las Vegas man-about-town, a mentor for the hospitality crowd, an elegant and charming bon vivant.  I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard the stories and I’m not making this stuff up. I’ve been planning my party outfit for weeks.

OK…we’re not really going JUST for the party.  Boyd will be showing off new work from Jamie Drake, Barbara Barry and BAMO’s Gerry Jue.

Jamie has designed a fabulous new chandelier – envision the Prosecco Sconce on steroids – that will be shown to the public for the first time at HD.  We’ve all seen the renderings, but no one has seen the actual fixture yet (not even an actual photo), and it better be amazing because it will be anchoring our space in the Donghia booth #4329.

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Looking to the Future: Decorative LED Candelabra Lamps

Check out this LED lamp from Ushio.  It’s an LED candelabra lamp, but it looks pretty darn similar to the incandescent filament bulbs we all know & love…

U-LED Candelabra Filament Lamp by Ushio

LED lamps are kind of weird looking… some might even call them ugly.  The people who are using these are probably covering them up with a lovely lampshade… so it’s nice to know that there’s hope for a prettier LED bulb.

Current LED candelabra based lamps aren't so pretty...

Don’t get me wrong – the Ushio U-LED lamp is not perfect by any means (they put out about as much light as a smoldering matchstick).  So not really a viable option right now.  But it shows that someday we may have suitable decorative LED lamps that actually look nice.  As Martha Stewart would say: “That’s a good thing”!

It’s an Honor Just to be Nominated… And Other Stories From the Design Bloggers Conference

I went to my first ever Design Bloggers Conference {DBC} in L.A. last week.  The Socialight is a new endeavor for Boyd, and we wanted to learn the ins and outs of blogging in the design world and connect with like-minded people.  So off to La La Land I went…

It’s An Honor Just to be Nominated

Our humble (yet fabulous) blog was nominated for The Best New Design Blog at the DBC… which is apparently akin to The Best Picture of the Year at the Oscars.  It’s kind of a big deal.  Sadly, The Socialight did not win.  I did try to Jedi mind-trip Leslie Wood of Hadley Court on her way up to accept the award… but it didn’t work.  I jest!

In all honesty – I was surprised and really proud that The Socialight was nominated.  Especially considering the pool of talented bloggers on hand at the DBC.  So – while I might joke about wanting to trip Leslie… what I actually mean to say is that it truly is an honor just to be nominated!

Windsor and Charlotte and Barbara… Oh My!

A big part of the conference was celebrity speakers… or as one of the conference attendees said “some important people in design talking about themselves”.  Windsor Smith, Charlotte Moss and Barbara Barry each captivated the audience in their own unique way.  Here’s a few choice tidbits from their talks:

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An LED Tribute to 75 Years on the Bay

A little rain can’t stop the fun in San Francisco!  This was evident by the thousands of people who made it out to the Embarcadero and beyond to watch the unveiling of the LED light sculpture designed by Leo Villareal for the 75^th Anniversary of the Bay Bridge Tuesday night. 

To keep warm and avoid some of the crowds, I remained parked in my car with the heat on, the window opened slightly, allowing for an un-impeded view of the bridge.  The smell of bacon covered hot dogs and onions wafting over from the street corner, the patter of rain on the roof, and the warm hot cocoa in my hands ensured all of my senses were being stimulated for the historic event.

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Mar Vista Lighting Series Designed by Barbara Barry… PLUS Book-A-Day Promo Details!

We’re so excited to tell you about the Mar Vista Pendant and Sconce – which are our newest fixtures designed by Barbara Barry!  Barbara has been designing fixtures for Boyd Lighting for nearly two decades… and her new Mar Vista Series perfectly showcases her acumen for modernizing traditional designs.  The clean lines & familiar silhouettes of the Mar Vista Pendant and Sconce – make them perfect for transitional spaces.

Mar Vista Pendant in Blackened Brass

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When Art and Light Merge

Sometimes art and light merge… Here is a fine art photograph, where the spectral image of a person and their dog linger below a Boyd Linea Chandelier. The image is titled “re-visitation”.

"Re-visitation" by Randall Whitehead

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It Takes a Village to Launch a Light Fixture

It may only be February but spring has sprung at Boyd Lighting and we in Marketing are facing the New Year with some trepidation.  Boyd has an alarming number of fabulous new fixtures that will be launching over the next few months and a launch requires coordination in the extreme.  We are a small company where Engineering, Marketing and Sales work together in ways you probably can’t imagine to bring a fixture to our customers.

Take Dave Van Zet for example; he’s an engineer with a passion for photography that shoots most of our product shots for our tear sheets and the Boyd web site.  We’ve used other photographers over the years, but Dave helps us build these fixtures, and as a result he knows how to “light” a sconce or pendant more perfectly than anyone else.  Just look at our latest launches for samples of his work.

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