While creating an interior piece of furniture design, finding the key to conceiving the uniqueness of your idea is challenging. You need to sketch thousands of times, let every image in your mind flow through your pen, and bring it to reality with materials that can strengthen the true character of what you have finally been able to create.
As you can see, it is definitely a challenging task.
That is why smaller companies prefer to focus on few but incisive concepts. Such as Anima Soul Light, a still small lighting business that does not align with the modern mass-production industry but has been able to build its own identity simply by combining the contemporary interior design vision with the traditional spirit of the majestic island of Bali.
Their collection may have collected a small number of pieces. Still, each light you can find in their online store has its own originality and brings with it the reverb of the most iconic symbols of the most well-known island of the Indonesian archipelago.
Today we are introducing you to one of the boldest pieces we believe the Anima Soul Light designers were able to recreate: the Ubud lamp.
What is “Ubud”?
Ubud is recognized worldwide as the cultural and spiritual heart of Bali. Located among rice-paddies, steep ravines, and small farms, Ubud has become one of the most visited areas on the entire island, receiving more than three million foreign tourists each year.
As long as it appears as a small town, Ubud is more of an administrative district with famous streets that still today are the main destination of the cultural experience of thousands of international tourists, such as the Jalan Raya Ubud (the main road that runs east-west through the center of the city) or the two longs road that extend south from it, that are the Jalan Monkey Forest and the Jalan Hanoman.
There also are different sacred buildings that local people and foreigners use to pray or admire the beauties that the Balinese culture preserves. The most important are the following:
- Pura Desa Ubud, the main Hindu temple of the capital
- Pura Taman Saraswati (1952 A.D), also known as the Ubud Water Palace; is a relatively modern temple dedicated to the equivalent of the Greek goodness Athena, Saraswati (the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, wisdom, learning, speech, and art).
- Pura Dalem Agung Padangtegal (1350 A.D), also known as the Temple of Death. It probably is the most well-known Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and is used to worship the god Hyang Widhi in the personification of Shiva, the Recycler, or the Transformer.
There also is the Goa Gajah, or the Elephant Cave, a sanctuary built between the 9th-11th century as a place where to meditate. The site contains different Hindu and Buddhist symbols, but it is most known for its menacing faces carved in its entrance that enchant people worldwide.
Even if, by first impression, Ubud’s economy may appear highly dependent on tourism, the few remaining local people are trying to focus all their energies on a more sustainable economy that could preserve their land and their history rather than let it be destroyed (unluckily) as many other small realities around Bali.
That is why in Ubud you can find a lot of art museums, like the Blanco Renaissance Museum, the Neka Art Museum or the Agung Rai Museum of Art, that promote local crafts (and the Balinese art in general) while simultaneously stimulating an exciting dialogue with overseas artists and visions.
The connection between Ubud and Anima Soul Light
Inspired by the firmness of Ubud people to cherish their culture by letting it live through the course of the years with firm contact with the international community, Anima Soul Light has tried to praise their efforts by combining in a bold design the natural shape of the town’s rice terraces with an ascending “tower” that connects it with the sky. When these two unite, you will get a growing light that will spread all around your room and give you the feeling of being warm and at home at the end.