Tatu – Santa & Cole
Design by André Ricard. The tatu, or armadillo, is a friendly mammal with a shell on its back that protects it when it rolls up into a ball. On a transoceanic flight, while reading about Argentinean wildlife and contemplating how the light above his seat did not disturb his sleeping wife next to him, André Ricard came up with this lamp that became a pop-art icon in Europe.

Tatu takes us back to carefree days, when consumer goods came to European middle classes and their children boldly started a huge aesthetic revolution in which everything was contorted, from Andy Warhol to The Beatles to Mary Quant. Everything could be expressed differently. Like a compact flexo, Tatu’s mechanical body was conceived in three sections that can rotate independently to adapt its use for a shelf, on a desk, on a bedside table and even as a wall lamp (fittings included).

The Santa & Cole edition enhances its initial performance by including LED technology, which makes the light intensity easy to adapt (from 0 to 100% in linear progression) and the source far less hot and longer lasting, but it also includes a moveable converging lens that extends or reduces the focal length between the light column (30º opening) and the general diffuser (50º opening). This means that the intensity and focal length are now adjustable. With the incorporation of André Ricard, Santa & Cole is reinforcing its Design Classic Collection, which already includes such masters as Arne Jacobsen, Miguel Milá, Antoni de Moragas and Ilmari Tapiovaara.