London-based Michael Anastassiades makes objects that feel built to outlast the moment, anchored in mechanical logic, as if each piece has been engineered for calm permanence. Yet within that rigour, something quietly lyrical takes hold, turning precision into poetry. Take the ‘Mobile Chandelier’, conceived in 2008, for instance,the longest-running and most celebrated design in the Michael Anastassiades collection. The design’s enduring success, year after year, has inspired the studio to commission a new film and photographic shoot by Alexandros Pissourios, exploring the remarkable craftsmanship and handmade precision behind each piece.
Watch: the making of Michael Anastassiades' ‘Mobile Chandelier’
Film by Alexandros Pissourios
‘The Mobile Chandelier started as an idea to create a light structure with multiple sources of light, which could be moved around freely, creating different arrangements,’ shares the designer on what gives the piece its rare longevity. ‘I wanted the arms holding the various elements to balance perfectly and to be able to experience this delicate sense of equilibrium. I was imagining a chandelier with a gesture similar to the mobile sculptures by Alexander Calder, only where individual arms would carry electricity and the balancing elements at the ends of each arm would glow. The experience would start at the place of assembly, with the idea that the customer could feel the delicate balance when installing the light.’
The piece also carries a reference to nature, as if glowing planets or satellites are quietly orbiting on different axes.
Filmmaker Pissourios, who lives and works between London and Cyprus, explores the possibilities inherent in 16mm film and analogue cameras, blending ethnographic approaches with experimental cinema. Here, he turns his lens to the tiniest processes and technicalities behind the making of the iconic chandelier, showing how even its design and assembly feel, in their own quiet way, are nothing short of magical.
The film showcases a conversation between the strength of materials and human precision that coaxes the chandelier into life. Each ‘Mobile Chandelier’ is composed as its own entity, made of roughly 200 handcrafted components in patinated brass. In a Devon workshop, a highly trained team assembles every piece by hand, adjusting and re-adjusting until the whole settles into harmony, made more delicate still by the minute weight differences inherent to mouth-blown opaline glass. ‘The idea behind mouth-blown glass is that it can never be replicated perfectly, neither its exact diameter nor its weight,’ explains Anastassiades. ‘So the maker requires a jeweller’s or a watchmaker’s precision in [their] process. There could have been other materials where an exact match was achieved to the milligram, but I like the idea that these elements could have been given or found objects.’
The film also lingers on the final act: we watch the brass being hand-patinated, in the signature faded black, and the more expressive earthy red developed as a deeper, warmer counterpoint. These surfaces, along with a spectrum of other colours are brought to completion by a specialist in a south London workshop, where colour is treated not as coating, but as character. In these moments, the film reveals the ‘Mobile Chandelier’s quiet complexity: the slow labour behind its lightness, and lasting elegance that has secured its place as a modern design icon.
‘Through this film I wanted to communicate the idea that even if an “exact” multiple, this is an entirely handcrafted object that is put together by a small team of highly skilful artisans,’ says Anastassiades. ‘That each piece is unique as the balancing act of putting one together is never the same, the precision in its making is one closer to jewellery rather than a large-scale sculpture and the customer will be able to appreciate the unique way these pieces are made.’