We’re taking another look at our classic lamp design Snowball, available as table lamp and floor lamp versions. Launched seventeen years ago, Snowball was our very first product, creating momentum that carried the brand forward.

One of Norway’s most acclaimed chefs, Trond Svendgård has always had an appreciation for aesthetics. His links with Northern starts at the very beginning, when he became one of the original four founders of the company. In 2005 the new brand was launched together with the first product, the Snowball lamp.

A chef as a designer, how did it come about?

I´m one of the founders of Northern, and to start we needed our very first product. I became the natural choice to create our first lamp since I´ve worked the most with aesthetics and function through my culinary art. The other three founders were economists, and later we connected with real designers. I though that was the right way to make products for the future.

How did you think when designing a lamp and not a classic dish?

My food philosophy to succeed is keep it simple with few ingredients. To create a classic dish, it´s even more important because everyone must be able to create it and like it.

If you think about all food classics we have in all different cuisines, most of them are simple with few ingredients. They often need different textures like crispy or soft, plus a balance of tastes like sour, sweet, salty or bitter to become a good dish, and to become a new classic.

Snowball became a result of this cooking philosophy. It´s few ingrediencies, glass and steel, it has different textures in a way, round shade, square base, short and long base, and you don´t need to have a certain taste to like it. It´s simple and have a function that suits most of the settings. Maybe we soon can call it a classic after being a bestseller for almost 20 years?

A new chapter

The little Snowball lamp was the beginning of a new chapter for the four guys. They had produced one lamp, but would anyone buy it from the unknown brand called Northern Lighting? We asked one of the founders and CEO of Northern, Ove Rogne.

‘With the new lamp in our hand, we went from shop to shop in Oslo, trying to convince them to take the new small Norwegian brand in their shop. Some few good shops decided to give it a try, and thankfully the lamp started selling well and much better than both they and we had imagined. And thanks to that our small team dared to continue making more lamps – and this laid the foundation to make the next steps possible. Northern was here to stay! All thanks to this tiny little beauty’

With its timeless, geometric shapes, Snowball continues to be one of Northern’s most popular designs, setting the tone for many more lighting innovations to come.