The Home Design And Manufacturing Company Umbra

Umbra is a home accessories design and furniture manufacturing company which was founded in 1978 in Toronto, Ontario, by childhood friends Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan. It opened its first retail store in Toronto in 2007, and today has satellite offices in Brazil, the US, the Netherlands, and China. It now has stores in thirteen other countries, while many of its products are sold through other retailers. In fact, it sells over 2,000 different lines through 25,000+ retailers in 120 countries.

The company has its own in-house design team of over 30 designers in Canada and abroad headed by Matt Carr. Many other independent designers have also worked for Umbra including Karim Rashid, Harry Allen, and Hlynur Atlason. 

 
In 1996 Rashid designed the Garbo trash can which was named after the actress Greta Garbo and mimics the shape of her body. It is made of polypropylene and available in a range of different colours. In the first two years of production, the Garbo wastebasket sold over 2,000,000 units and still sells today in a smaller version named the Garbino. In 1997 it was awarded the Chicago Athenaeum Museum Good Design Award.

Among many other products there is a range of Umbra wall mirrors including the Hub mirror which was designed by Paul Rowan for his own home. This is a circular 37" diameter wall mirror with a rubber surround in black, and as Rowan said, the idea of using rubber appealed to him because the strong silhouette and protective "bumper" was a very casual and innovative design solution. There is also a smaller 24" version of the Hub, together with an oval mirror as well.

The Dima Umbra wall mirrors are a set of three diamond shaped mirrors which hang from a slim metal chain on a black button knob. You can hang three or more of these mirrors to provide a cascading waterfall effect.

There are also the Prisma Umbra wall mirrors which are a contemporary geometric mirror with a black wire edge. The three-dimensional wire edge also has an interesting effect as the wires cast shadows and alter and overlap to create different shapes as you move your viewing angle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clocks Are an Essential Part of Our Lives

Image
What would we do without clocks? Throughout our waking hours we need to know what the time is. We need to know if it’s time to leave the house to get the train to work. We need to know if its coffee break time, lunch time, time to leave the office, time to put the dinner on, time to go to the football match, and even time to go to bed. OK, many of us have a watch, although more people today rely on their mobiles to tell the time. But when you have a clock, all you need to do is to look at it on the wall and it tells you the time. You don’t have to get your phone out of your pocket or handbag and switch it on – just look at the clock on the wall. That is why there is a plethora of modern clocks that you can buy. They still do the same thing that Victorian ones did, but they just look as though they were made in the 21st century. Having said that, there are modern clocks that are made using Roman numerals which gives us a hint of times gone past, but there are...
Read more

A Clock That Is A Mirror And A Wall Light?

Image
Did you know that you can get a wall clock which is not only a clock but also a mirror? Did you know that you can get one that is not only a clock AND a mirror but is also a wall light? Well you can. There are companies who produce wall clock’s for the 21st century home which are not only clocks but is also a mirror and a wall light as well. What more do you need for your money?! We all need something that we can glance at to tell the time. All right, you might wear a watch, but then again you might not. Lots of people today don’t, because they have a mobile which tells them the time, However, you have to get that out of your pocket or handbag and switch it on to tell the time, whereas illuminated wall clocks are there all the time, and all you need is a glance to tell you that you’ve got five minutes before you have to leave for the station to get your train into work. Fair enough, you won’t need the illuminated part of the illuminated wall clocks ...
Read more

Some Examples of the Many Designs of Modern Wall Clocks

Image
One of the most important things in our lives is time. It has a habit of passing, and once it has done so we can’t get it back. It has gone forever. However, time rules a lot of our lives. We have to be at work on time. We have to catch a train on time. The beef is going to take some time to cook. This or that is taking a long time. So it follows that we frequently need to know what time it is, and for that we have watches and clocks. Many homes have wall clocks in the sitting room, the kitchen, the bedroom, and sometimes even the bathroom, because we constantly need to check the time. There are some really great designs of modern wall clocks available, some of which might be described as “way out”. For example, one of the modern wall clocks is the Invotis Wall Gear and Date Clock which consists of a set of gear wheels which turn slowly and move a large gear wheel which tells the time. The clock has two smaller gear wheels which also display the month and...
Read more