Berea Sandstone Lamps

On the occasion of New York Design Week 2024, minimalist design store and publication, Leibal, is pleased to present the platform’s first exclusive product collaboration: Berea Sandstone Lamps by San Francisco-based designers, Hank Beyer and Alex Sizemore. Hank and Alex have worked together since 2017 as a multidisciplinary object creation studio, HB-AS, with a focus on furniture, product, and sculpture across various mediums.

The origin of this new sandstone collection coincides with the founding of the young studio. During their time as industrial design students at the University of Cincinnati, Beyer andS izemore spent time during the summer of 2017 documenting and observing the operations of a family-owned quarry along the Berea sandstone formation in Northeastern Ohio. Out of an appreciation for the ancient beauty of these natural formations, the pair salvaged a number of discarded offcuts that would have otherwise been ground into aggregate, and instead transformed them into a series of evocative lamps. The project caught the curatorial eye of Leibal founder, Leo Lei, who promptly published the collection in 2017.

Now, seven years later, Leibal will debut an exclusive, 11-piece collection of HB-AS’s one-of-a-kind sandstone lighting fixtures. After returning to the quarry this past winter, the designers spent a week on-site salvaging a dynamic collection of fragments to craft a series of lights informed by the industrial processes of mining and shaping sandstone.

Over the course of 350 million years, the stone of the Berea sandstone formation was gradually deposited by a river flow originating in Eastern Canada. Like the rings of a tree, each fine detail found within the stone tells a story of passing time. Clay, iron, aluminum, magnesium, and other mineral deposits originally carried by the river create distinguished and varied strokes of colors, marks, and patterns across the stone pieces.

The collaboration between HB-AS and Leibal marks the debut of Leibal's curatorial arm, which will seek to elevate the work of young designers through bespoke, limited- and singular-edition collections.