Dutch artist and designer Sabine Marcelis is known for her warm and wonderful colour palette, applied to her renowned furniture and object designs, such as her ‘Varmblixt’ lamp collection for Ikea, her inflatable sunset-coloured maze at Coachella, and, in collaboration with Mathmos, her limited-edition takes on the lava lamp.
Discover Sabine Marcelis’ latest lava lamp collaboration
Marcelis amid giant bubblegum-pink ‘Column’ lava lamps created with British manufacturer Mathmos. A limited-edition release will follow in November
Mathmos is the original manufacturer of the lava lamp – or ‘Astro’ lamp – and has worked with Marcelis three times already, creating a yellow lamp in 2023, a burgundy version in 2024 and a subtle green take alongside the tallest-ever version in 2025.
This collaborative streak continues in her first solo exhibition, ‘Light and Color’. As part of the show, Mathmos presents ‘Mathmos Lava Columns’, an immersive installation showcasing the giant 296cm Mathmos X Studio Sabine Marcelis ‘Column’ lava lamps.
Currently, the ‘Column’ lamp is available in three lava colourways; but for the exhibition, a bubblegum-pink version has been created. The British manufacturer and Studio Sabine Marcelis will launch a coordinating new limited-edition ‘Astro’ lava lamp in the same hue in November, with a run of 1,000 lamps worldwide.
Now open at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (30 October 2026 – 4 April 2027), 'Light and Color' is completely immersive and looks at the designer’s focus on transparency, reflection, opacity, and translucency. In a flurry of colour, Marcelis brings together furniture, lighting, mirrors and large-scale spatial installations from across her practice to explore the sensual experience of light and materiality.
Marcelis at the Mathmos factory with her giant lava lamp in progress
‘What I wanted to create was not a retrospective in the traditional sense but a series of spatial experiences that show how light and colour behave across different scales and materials,’ shares Marcelis. ‘Some works are presented individually so you can really focus on their material and optical properties. Others are arranged as full room-sized installations where light and colour permeate the entire space.’
‘The lava lamp is one of the only objects that has light, colour and translucency all in one’
Sabine Marcelis
Among the displays, the towering ‘Column’ lava lamps, surrounded by mirrors, give the illusion of a lava lamp world – a chance to immerse yourself in a hotly hued piece of nostalgia, for those who recall lava lamps from their 1960s debut or subsequent revivals over the decades.
‘I always wanted to design a giant lava lamp; that was the thought I had in my very first meeting with Mathmos,’ shares the Dutch designer. ‘The lava lamp is one of the only objects that has light, colour and translucency all in one. It does what I try to do with resin and glass, but it adds the dimension of time and movement. Light, colour, movement and reflection all working together in a single space. The columns are constantly moving, the blobs rising, merging and descending, forever evolving.’
The new limited edition lamp is available at mathmos.com. Sabine Marcelis’ solo exhibition ‘Light and Color’ is on show at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich from 30 October 2026 to 4 April 2027