RUM, THE preferred tipple of mariners of old, is a true lifestyle spirit that always guarantees a good time. So says Paul Monahan, global brand ambassador for Sailor Jerry Spiced.
“Rum is amazing because we don’t normally know much about it,” the cheerful American told XP over a glass at Renaissance Bangkok Ratchapra-song Hotel’s R Bar.
“We know quite a bit about whisky and vodka but rum is rarely mentioned. It’s often hidden at the back of the bar, waiting for someone to order a sugary tiki drink. In fact, rum is very versatile and it suits anyone from rum aficionados to those who generally like brown spirits and cocktails drinkers. Rum is a drink associated with celebration and escape. Take a sip, decompress and find yourself in a more fun, exciting place.”
Sailor Jerry Spiced rum was created in honour of the America’s notorious tattoo artist, Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins (1911-1973) who moved to Hawaii in the 1930s and inked sailors and soldiers during WWII. Ironically, Collins was deeply influenced by the culture that drew the Americans into the war – Japan. The most proficient and sophisticated tattoo artists of the times were the Japanese masters known as Horis. He became the first Westerner to enter in regular correspondence with these masters, sharing techniques and tattoo tracings.
By fusing American and Asian sensibilities, Collins created his own style of tattooing that is iconic and artistic, radical and beautiful with symbols and motifs such as bottles of booze, snakes, swallows, motor heads, guns, anchors and pin-up girls.
Even today, the Sailor Jerry Festival is organised annually on Oahu in honour of Collins’s legacy. The locally and independently produced event includes live music, DJs, cabaret performances, movie screenings, a pin-up fashion show – where models wear outfits designed from Sailor Jerry fashions, neighbourhood tours, and tattoos are available at two area shops, including Sailor Jerry’s last location at 1033 Smith Street in Honolulu’s Chinatown.
His friends started a clothing line 16 years ago selling T-shirts printed with Collins’ original designs and then a rum brand a year after that. Rums from various Caribbean distilleries are blended by experienced hands in Scotland with their own recipe of natural spices and flavours to yield fragrant and subdued sweet spirit with tropical hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, caramel, rich vanilla and American flair.
“It’s made with the same sense of craft that Norman Collins applied to his own work. Sailor Jerry Spiced is a straight-up, no-nonsense, old-school rum, blended the way it should be, bold and smooth.” Monahan says.
Because Sailor Jerry Spiced is slightly sweeter and not too alcohol-forward, it can be enjoyed in various different ways, from neat with an orange twist, on the rocks to a long drink with ice cubes and ginger beer. Its caramel and vanilla note and subtle hint of spices also makes it a nice base for many brown spirit-based cocktails like Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Mai Tai, Pina Colada as well as an array of tiki drinks.
Monahan demonstrated some simple signature cocktails by Sailor Jerry using basic ingredients.
A light and refreshing drink, The Boys are Back in Town mixes Sailor Jerry Spiced, cold brew coffee, unsweetened almond milk, home-made pineapple basil syrup and grated Himalayan sea salt. You build it as you would a Mojito with the rum, coffee and syrup stirred to blend, then layer on some ice cubes and top it with almond milk.
Why almond milk? Monahan says that while fresh cow milk would quickly disperse and make the whole drink opaque, almond milk is thicker and its consistency makes it float on the surface longer, allowing you to enjoy the flavours of the ingredients. To enhance the caramel nuance in the rum, dust the top of the drink with salt and garnish with basil leaf.
Basil seems like an ingredient that would stick out in this recipe, but it blends in surprisingly well with the earthiness of the coffee and the spiced tone of the rum. To make your own home-made pineapple basil syrup, steep bunches of basil in basic simple syrup then strain the liquid over pineapple puree to get the aroma.
Another easy drink is Route 66, which is a bit more alcohol-forward. Just Mix Sailor Jerry Spiced, Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth and Drambuie in a short glass filled with ice and garnish with orange peel.

H&M is launching its new collaboration designer collection with high-end brand, Kenzo today – and it’s only available at their stores at Siam Paragon and Central World.
Vibrant heritage designs, full of vivid prints, feminine details and playful silhouettes are all part of Kenzo’s collection for women.
Creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have filtered through the archives of founder Kenzo Takada and given it a modern attitude.
Colours and prints contrast and clash and ribbons and ruffles give folkloric charm, while sporty shapes add urban energy. It’s a collection of designs that are totally unique to H&M, both wearable and exclusive, that shine a fresh light on one of fashion’s most thrilling histories.
Many pieces in the collection offer a new take on Kenzo archive pieces, such as the long tiered dress made entirely from patterned ribbons. It’s one of the most iconic designs – only two of the original were ever made – making this new version a true collector’s piece.
Kimonos were a signature of the brand, and for H&M Lim and Leon have created two reversible quilted styles, one a long kimono coat, the other a zip-up kimono blouson. Meanwhile, a classic 80s look is recreated with a long-sleeve tiger print jersey top and matching tiger print jersey pants.
For the vivid prints, freedom and vivacity in the clash of prints run throughout the collection. Key prints include the famous Kenzo’s tiger stripes, a mash-up of animal prints, florals, an archive medallion print and an oversized print of mesh. Often there’s more than one print used in the same garment, like the flowing silk dress that combines mesh with floral, or the long tiered and pleated skirt that clashes different shades of animal print.
The collection is overflowing with femininity, especially the ruffles that fall across many of the pieces. Parisian ruffles sit on a mandarin collar of a tiger print shirt, while ruffles decorate the edge of a reversible tiger-print wrap skirt. There’s also pleating and gathers to soften the silhouette, while contrast colour piping catches the eye.
Knitwear mixes machine and craft, with a 3D jacquard tiger stripe sweater trimmed with a band of striped crochet knit at the hem. The little details are all important in the collection, especially the sweet antiqued gold flower buttons that hold the mandarin collar neckline of a silk mesh medallion print tunic dress.
Kenzo’s menswear collection at H&M is bold and powerful, a celebration of print, colour and self-expression. Creative directors Lim and Leon have selected archival prints by founder Kenzo Takada and reinvigorated them on new menswear classics such as sweatshirts, hoodies, bombers and parkas.
The result is a collection of pieces that are totally unique, playfully mixing colour, print and texture to express freedom in fashion.
Logos are also one of the key themes. A new patchwork logo adapted from the archives that reads Kenzo Jungle Paris, with the letters in a circle around a Kenzo tiger, appears on a series of sweatshirts, either black, cream or in a clashing animal print, as well as on T-shirts. It is also patchworked onto the back of many pieces, such as the black padded zip-up leather |jacket.

THESE PAST WEEKS, amid tears and aching hearts, artists and art students across Thailand have been rendering portraits of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej in public places, but youngsters at Silpakorn University, led by sculptors Pongpan Chantanmattha and Khemarat Kongsook, have taken on monumental missions.
Near the statue of the school’s founder, Silpa Bhirasri at Silpakorn’s Tha Phra campus, Pongpan’s students are creating a likeness in clay of the King at age 19, when he ascended to the throne.
The 87-centimetre-tall bust, titled “Phra Bhumibol”, will be moulded in plaster within two months. Pongpan will then spend the next 10 months sculpting it from a 500-kilogram block of white marble. The final piece – standing 89 centimetres tall, signifying His Majesty’s age – will be completed in time for the royal cremation.
“We usually see bronze sculptures of the King,” Pongpan points out. “Marble is rarely used because sculpting it requires great skill, and high-quality marble is quite expensive.”
As rare as the marble itself, the chance to devote their efforts to the King’s memory – and to history – represents an important moment for the students. The small team assembled for the project began their work on October 24 and will remain involved in the process throughout the year.
Pongpan, 42, sees it is a valuable lesson for them, in both art and in the perseverance that His Majesty always counselled.
Now an associate dean of painting, sculpture and graphic arts, Pongpan was an adviser to the students who in the days after the King’s death painted the remarkable array of nine portraits of the King on the front wall of the university facing the Grand Palace.
“Carving marble is very complicated – it requires patience, precision and careful planning,” says Pongpan, who studied at the Academy of Fine Art Carrara in Tuscany on an Italian government scholarship.
“I decided to use white marble because it’s natural and pure and represents the power of nature, as reflected in the title ‘Phra Bhumibol’. Phra means ‘superb’ or ‘purified’.”
Carrara sits in a region famed for its white marble. Eight years ago, while Pongpan was still studying there, he sculpted a 60-centimetre-tall bust of the King in that very |marble.
While working previously in the monuments division of the government’s Fine Arts Department, he’d
wondered why the country had no marble statues of its monarchs. “So when I went to Italy I took a plaster model of the King to carve there. And when I went to buy the marble, the quarry owner asked whom I planned to carve and I told him King Bhumibol. He gave me the marble for free.”
That sculpture has ever since been kept out of sight at the Fine Arts Department, given the widespread belief that royal monuments should not be made before the ruler’s death lest they incur bad luck.
Like others, Pongpan’s piece has instead been of value in teaching the craft. For “Phra Bhumibol” he was able to study sculptures of the King made by Silpa Bhirasri and Sanan Silakorn. He also scrutinised Silpa’s model of King Taksin in Silpakorn’s Sculpture Hall.
He had proposed a King Rama IX monument before, but the idea was deemed inappropriate. So he turned his attention instead to King Rama IV, creating the two bronze sculptures now displayed at Saranrom Palace in Bangkok and Khao Wang Palace in Petchburi and another in marble in front of Chomklao Hospital in Petchburi.
He is fully prepared to honour King Bhumibol in the same way.
“This sculpture will be in the contemporary style, realistically human but with a peaceful Buddhist ges
ture. His Majesty was handsome and his anatomy perfect. Physically, he was square of face, with a sharp nose and a little bit broad in the ears.”
Pongpan will get a 500-kilogram block of white marble from the well-reputed Hin-on Co in Saraburi, like Carrara another renowned source of the stone. The company is charging nothing for the marble, happy to help the sculptor pay tribute to the King.
Meanwhile, at Silpakorn’s Sanam Chan campus in Nakhon Pathom, National Artist Khemarat and his team are fashioning an even bigger bust of His Majesty – 3.5 metres in height. The clay model will eventually be re-rendered in fibreglass.
Khemarat started work on October 29, the day after the United Nations’ special session in honour of the King.
“I found the speeches very moving,” he says. “It showed that our King wasn’t just a great King for Thailand but also for the whole world. He was praised for his ideas on sufficiency and sustainability and December 5, his birthday, was designated World Soil Day due to his dedication to soil science and conservation.”
Khemarat, who is 69, is depicting His Majesty between ages 65 and 70, drawing inspiration from a fond childhood memory as well as a lifelong study of the King’s philosophy, speeches and hard work on behalf of the people.
“When I was 10 I went to pay respects to the King when he visited my hometown in Surin. I truly expected him to descend from the sky, like an angel, but he was indeed a human being.
“As I grew older and learned more about his devotion to the kingdom, I understood that we really did have a great king.”
Khemarat’s sculpture will show His Majesty standing on a book entitled “Thailand”, its surface etched with the script of the 13th-century Ramkhamhaeng Stele “to underline the civilisation of the kingdom”.
It was Khemarat who sculpted the bas-relief minted on coins in 1986, the design taken from a famous photo of the King toiling in the countryside, a bead of sweat at the end of his nose.
The artist’s current project dwarfs that memorable image in scale, but history has a place for all sizes and all emotions.
HISTORY IN THE MAKING
– Khemarat Kongsook’s sculpture will be shown – along with 89 paintings of His Majesty done by Silapkorn University alumni – in an outdoor exhibition on the school’s Tha Phra campus on November 26 and 27.
– Visitors will at the same time be able to view Pongpan Chantanmattha’s work in progress, “Phra Bhumibol”.

AUDEMARS PIGUET, maker of high-end luxury Swiss wristwatches, delves deep into its long history in a new exhibition in Shanghai that’s disguised as an art installation.
The show titled “To Break the Rules, You Must First Master Them” is set up at Yuz Museum, a private contemporary gallery and encompasses more than 200 watches spanning the life of the Swiss firm. This exhibition, says its chairwoman Jasmine Audemars, is the most ambitious ever organised by Audemars Piguet outside its museum in Le Brassus.
“A few people know who we are. No one even knows where Le Brassus is.” says Francois-Henry Bennahmias, the watchmaker’s chief executive with a wry smile.
“Every time we share the Audemars Piguet’s stories, people say, ‘Wow! We didn’t know that’. And so we realised that everything about Audemars Piguet should be shared with others.”
Designed by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur, the installation is a piece of architecture in itself.
Mathieu made a huge copper ring placed in the Yuz Museum to embody a watch dial – or the ring of time. The centrepiece is a pile of boulders representing the watchmaker’s mountain home. It is surrounded by 12 doors, each of which opens to reveal a story about Audemars Piguet: from it origins to today, from watch-making to contemporary art, from the small town in the Valle de Joux to other parts of the world.
Watching the installation from above, you see the visitors walking in criss-cross lines inside a huge watch dial. “In a way they act like the hands of a watch,” says the French designer.
Back down in the installation hall, you feel like you are turning the clock back to the very beginning of time.
“This rock is a perfect piece for Audemars Piguet. It signifies the beginning,” says Lehanneur.
Indeed, without a rock, Audemars Piguet would not be recognised as a watchmaker.
The company is one of the highest-end watches, and one of the few remaining independent maisons. It was founded in Valle de Joux in the Swiss Canton of Vaud by Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet in 1875.
The landscape of Valle de Joux is rugged and the mountains are often capped with snow for nine months. Unlike Lausanne, it is not a place for people to lived or for crops to grow. In the old day, the Combiers, as the natives of Valle de Joux are known, had to forge knives and tools over the long winter and trade these for potatoes and wine with the French who live on the other side of the mountain when summer arrived
It is, however, the perfect place for a horologist. Locals make the rocks pay for such a long and harsh winter by extracting top-quality iron ore for the watch industry.
“The quiet of the valley with its magnificent views means that the Audemars Piguet watchmakers have plenty of time to concentrate on the complexity of the watch,” the French designer says.
Visitors to the exhibition access the valley through Room No 1 – The Origin. The story of Audemars Piguet starts in Room No 2, where the family crest is portrayed along with flags, symbols and coats of arms.
“There are many things to say about a 141-year-old firm and so I needed 12 rooms for 12 chapters of the Audemars Piguet story,” he says.
Other rooms showcase the vast collection of heritage watches – “1875 Jules-Louis Audemars School Watch”, for example. This pocket watch is the genesis of Audemars Piguet. Jules-Louis Audemars created it to mark his apprenticeship prior to establishing the company with Edward-Auguste Piguet the same year. Room No 6 is a fascinating stop, dedicated to the design and evolution of time pieces influenced by cultural movements, which range from Art Nouveau in the 1900s to the hippie movement of the 1960s.
Visitors can also experience what it is like to be a watchmaker by drilling the watch dial or working with a tiny screw.
“I want the visitor to treat the show like an art exhibition,” says Mathieu. “You can go fast – or you can go slowly. You can spend more time in one room and little in another. It’s up to you.
“At Audemars Piguet art exhibition, you have your own time. You’re a piece of time.”
-“To Break the Rules, You Must First Master Them” art exhibition by Audemars Piguet is on show at Shanghai’s Yuz Museum until Novem-ber 13. Dubai and New York City are the next stops for the exhibition.

LA MER has found inspiration in “the power of small” as it introduces its new Moisturising Soft Lotion and Skincolour de La Mer.
Loretta Miraglia, senior vice president of product development and innovation, and Kayleen McAdams makeup artist flew into Bangkok for the launch event. Miraglia said she was inspired by forward-thinking industries, not just the beauty business.
“It is a really interesting adventure, not just makeup or skincare. Every single industry has a similarity and there are things that I learn from paint, textile or toys. There are things you wouldn’t expect and you can take something from them and bring to our world to make it something very new and exciting.”
By looking far beyond the realm of beauty and into a new generation science, La Mer has embraced “the power of small”, from materials such as liquid microchips to fluid microstructures that change the shape and function of physical materials. “Super-fluids” are reinventing our world, she said.
“These ‘super-fluids’ use particles, gels and microchips that are so incredibly small that they flow like a liquid. In the beauty world, ‘super-fluids’ have become the precursor for a brave new world of ‘super lotions,’ with unique textures. In recent years, La Mer has set out to harness the ‘power of the small’ to create our own super-lotion. The process is extraordinary. The results are amazing,” she said.
“Our highly specialised Soft Lotion Capsules surround each Moisture-Sphere’s soft centre with a super hydrating gel. This capsule process is remarkable, and each one is individually formed. The result is a water gel made up of millions of these micro-size spheres that flawlessly penetrates the skin barrier, flooding the skin with hydration. “It does this first and fast, in moments the soft lotion center is released and melts deep into the skin to deliver the healing energy that makes La Mer, La Mer. Skin looks and feels noticeably healthy and plump, while it helps heal dryness from within with a rich moisture feel,” she said.
The “Look of La Mer”, introduces “Skincolour de La Mer”, a collection that comprises of foundation, concealer, powder and luxurious brushes. La Mer delivers soft skin benefits and an innovative Colour Capsule Technology for natural, pure looking colour that seamlessly blends five of the most sought after foundation attributes to transform skin in a moment and over time.
McAdams, who has been working with Hollywood celebrities, says she often gets inspiration from getting to know her clients to project who they are; their own essence of personalities, whether the classic look like Jennifer Lawrence or the wild look like Rihanna.
“A lot of trends that we’ve seen over the years – contouring or non-contouring, highlighting and strobing – are just about having beautiful, healthy skin. Whether you have a purple lip, red lip or chocolate brown lip it’s important to have healthy skin. Help from the inside will shine through the face.
“I try every makeup line of “Skincolour de La Mer”, everybody is excited about its benefit. It will last all day, from 2 o’clock in the afternoon to 2 o’clock in the morning. This is the product that past that test. There is the thing about lighting that you have to be aware of, you need a product that will suit the set.
There is also a great range of colour that suits and I can mix and match with any skin colour. The translucent powder will work for anybody from light to dark skin,” she said.

IT IS well known that His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who passed away on October 13, spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Switzerland. In all the King lived in Switzerland for 17 years and always regarded the alpine country as his second home.
The longest reigning monarch in the world, the King had a deep love for his country and for all Thai people. He was not just a man of ideas but worked hard and continuously to put his ideas into practice for the benefit of his subjects. His belief that the development of the country was based on human empowerment has been reflected over the years through countless exhibitions of photos, letters and postcards.
Now a new documentary is looking back on his early days as a child in Switzerland. Produced by the Government Savings Bank, “Following His Majesty the King’s Footsteps in Switzerland” is a series of 30 five-minute episodes that will start to air on the MCOT Channel on November 14 every Monday to Friday at 8.55am.
The bank is also holding a photo exhibition under the same name until November 15 on the fourth floor of Central Embassy. It features photographs of His Majesty the King, the Princess Mother, and other Mahidol family members during their 17 years in Switzerland, most of which have not been shown to the public before. The exhibition also explores His Majesty’s work in his early years, reflecting his intentions and ideas behind various projects.
Several VIPs turned out for Tuesday’s opening ceremony including GSB president Chatchai Payuhanaveechai, Minister Attached to the Prime Minister’s Office ML Panadda Diskul, and the Swiss ambassador to Thailand Ivo Siebar.
In his speech, ML Panadda spoke at the grief of the Thai people at their loss and, on a lighter note, mentioned how impressed his late father has been during his tenure as ambassador to Switzerland at the way the Princess Mother ensured the young royals enjoyed an ordinary childhood.
Chatchai added that the documentary had been produced to express deepest gratitude to His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
“The exhibition also featurse rare pictures of important places where the King used to reside and what they look like today. These best portray the places that groomed our beloved King in his childhood.”
The documentary features images of His Majesty registering for class at University of Lausanne and the wooden piano at the Thai Embassy in Bern, which graced the family home from April 1934 to July 1935. It also looks at the background of the Chitralada School milk project, which was inspired by his childhood experience in the Canton of Vaud, where free milk was given to children.
The Princess Mother took her young family to Switzerland in 1933. At the Royal residence, Villa Vadhana, near Lake Geneva in Lausance, the young princes and princess grew up surrounded by fresh clean air; snow-topped mountains, green hills, and the quiet lake. They cycled to school and explored the countryside.
“The years of education shaped the young people’s wisdom and experience. They went to the market on the weekends, they participated in the traditional school holiday camp which took the students skiing for one week. They travelled on the train,” Siebar said.
“In Switzerland the passing of His Majesty has deeply touched and saddened all friends of Thailand and particularly the sizeable number of Thais living in my home country.
“Switzerland was truly honoured to be the home of His Majesty and his family. The impression that His Majesty left is lasting and his testimony can be found in numerous places – at school, at the University of Lausanne, where he pursued his studies and in the Thai Pavilion on the shore of the lake of Geneva. The bonds were further strengthened when His Majesty the King returned to Switzerland with Her Majesty the Queen in 1960 on a state visit.”
“His Majesty spent quite a few years during the Second World War in Switzerland. Travelling was restricted and supplies were rationed. Even though Switzerland wasn’t involved in the fighting, it was a difficult time. I think that also shaped his thinking. We see a lot of similarities in His Majesty’s sufficiency economy and how we have developed out country, empowering people and making sure that the population is given viable opportunities to earn a living,” he says.

Thai artists Sakarin Krue-On, Araya Rasjarmrearnsook and Pannaphan Yodmanee are participating in Singapore Biennale 2016. Sakrit’s video installation “Kratua Teang Seua: Tiger Hunt” is on show at Singapore Management University’s de Suantio Gallery.
“Kratua Taeng Seua” is a traditional folktale about a tiger hunt, once well known throughout southern Thailand. In recent years, the number of traditional theatre troupes performing the play has diminished. Collaborating with one such group, the Wat Khuha Sawan Folk Play Company, Sakarin, 51, reimagines the folktale as a work of art reflecting life in a megacity.
The artist worked closely with the company to develop all aspects of the artwork, from scripting to costume design, facilitating the production of a community-centric artwork that grapples with the incompatibility between contemporary and traditional ways |of life.
Comprised of three components – a live performance, a silent film, and a behind-the-scenes documentary accompanied by performance relics and documentation – Sakarin’s retelling of the folktale highlights the agency of art in strengthening societal ties, by serving as the crucial link between disparate lifestyles often dichotomised as the “modern” and the “primitive”, and highlighting the fallacy of such divisions.
Araya’s video installation “Jaonua: The Nothingness” (“King of Meat: The Nothingness”) is on show at Singapore Art Museum (SAM).
This installation consolidates Araya’s thematic interests from throughout|her career in an attempt to extract |“the inseparable entanglement of things/lives/subjects”.
Negotiating the expanse of time between life and death, consumption presents itself as a dominant theme within the work –explored through the metaphysics of eating, femininity, the animal gaze, sexuality, and gender stereotypes.
Projected on four fabric screens leading up to a projection upon a bed, the presentation of the video works echoes the transient nature of our existence while also blurring the borders between art and life.
In this installation, Araya, 59, has woven various stories together into a cohesive experience. Almost akin to a surrealistic dream, she invites audiences to ponder with her the karmic consequences of being entrapped within the Sisyphean cycle of |existence.
Pannaphan’s site-specific installation is also at SAM.
In a titanic mural, Pannaphan, 28, presents a mapping of the Buddhist |cosmos that resembles a landscape painting. Using materials both raw and natural as well as the new and mass-produced, her amalgamation of contemporary and traditional Thai art |creates a unified cartography of the heavens and the earth that chronicles Southeast Asian history.
Pannaphan’s ongoing investigation of the intersecting points between Buddhist cosmology and modern science has led her to consider the concepts of change, loss, devastation and inevitable Armageddon.
The artist argues that persistent striving for development and progress ultimately exposes man’s shortcomings and the revelation of a larger universe outside our spheres of comfort and control. She presents the ultimate question: at the end of all ends, will we find comfort in our faith?

Olafur Eliasson’s fascination with natural light led him to illuminate the Tate Gallery in London with a giant fake sun 13 years ago.
Since that debut before the wider public, the Danish-Icelandic artist has made hundreds of thousands of small plastic suns that not only bring solar light to the darkest corners of the earth, but also fired up an entire green power movement.
“The idea is that you can achieve a lot with very little,” he says.
Eliasson, 49, is sitting in his spacious, light-filled studio in Berlin’s trendy Prenzlauer Berg district on a sunny autumn day.
Around his neck he wears a yellow plastic light designed like a large sunflower-like pendant with a small solar panel on the back. If charged for five hours during the day, after sunset it will emit four hours of bright light from the inbuilt LED lamp. Or 10 hours of dimmed light.
In partnership with engineer Frederik Ottersen, Eliasson powered up the “Little Sun” project in 2012 and now has 20 people working at the start-up’s offices in Berlin. They recently released their latest innovation, a solar lamp with attached charger that powers cell phones, all financed through a crowd-funding campaign.
There is huge demand for such devices in the world today. According to the United Nations, in 2014, 1.3 billion people still did not have access to electricity.
“This creates huge economic, environmental, social and health problems,” explains the business development manager of “Little Sun”, Felix Hallwachs.
The 39-year-old recalls a trip he made to rural Rwanda, where a coffee plantation worker told him that her child has a constant cough and eye problems from doing his homework beside a kerosene lamp in the evening.
The old-style lamps also cost a lot because of their fuel consumption.
“She asked me, ‘How can we tackle this together, so that I can provide my village with solar lamps?’” Hallwachs says.
This simple request touched on another concept behind “Little Sun”, since the team also aims to boost local economies. “We try to employ the concept of ‘trade not aid’,” stresses the manager. “This means we try with local partners to determine ways to create a ‘social business’.”
In developed countries you can buy the “Little Sun” in museum shops for about 25 dollars (Bt 875), for example in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This allows the makers to subsidise sales of the lamps in developing countries, where they go for half this price at markets or local shops, or can even be bartered for a commodity like a chicken.
As well as offering instant improvement to normal domestic life, the Little Sun lamps also do their bit in crisis situations.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, a friend of Eliasson’s, ordered 1,700 of them for distribution before he visited a refugee camp in the Greek islands. They also got plenty of use after the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015.
More than 440,000 units have been sold since the lamp’s launch four years ago, including more than 241,000 in areas without electricity, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by more than 25,000 tons, according to the makers.
In April 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies invested US$5 million in the project, making it possible for the Little Sun brand to expand on the African continent.
Dutch company WakaWaka uses a similar concept in its solar-powered flashlight launched in 2012.
Under the motto “Share the sun,” it sold more than 225,000 units in 47 countries. In four years the start-up estimates that this source of clean power cut CO2 emissions by 248,000 tons.
For Eliasson, who has strong ties with Africa and currently teaches at the university in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, Little Sun is a labour of love. And just because it is functional doesn’t mean it can’t have an artistic element, he points out.
Designing this unpretentious piece meant as much to him as his other work, says Eliasson, especially because it yielded an extra, fundamental joy.
“As a widely exhibited artist, I operate in a milieu that became very exclusive and elitist,” he says of the circles he usually deals with. “So I’m all the happier that this is also an artwork in itself that people can buy for a small price.”