Form Meets Ritual: Crafting for Beauty & Utility
For over a decade, Commune Design and Remains Lighting have shared a partnership rooted in a mutual respect for craft, material, and the role that design plays in daily life. What began with light fixtures (originally the Dome series and Table Lantern) has now expanded into a new realm: objects for the home.
As Commune put it in a recent note to their community, “In celebration of our long and fruitful partnership, we’ve expanded into home accessories with a collection of objects for the home that are not only highly functional but exquisitely hand crafted in their Brooklyn factory. Trust us, there is nothing like them out there, that’s why we made them.”
These three new families—Josef, Origami, and Paavo—are designed with the same rigor and refinement as our larger fixtures, but scaled to the intimate rituals of everyday life: a tray on a console for keys, a cup on a vanity for toothbrushes, a bin under a desk for scrapped ideas. Commune says it best: “These are pieces made to live with: to hold, to use, and to keep.”
A Polished Brass Josef Cup holds our favorite Blackwing Pencils on a marble bookshelf.
At the core of this collaboration is a belief that utility and beauty are not separate pursuits but two expressions of the same idea. Each object is built to carry weight and serve a purpose, yet each one also elevates its surroundings. “Designed for desks, dressing tables, kitchens, side tables, and bathrooms,” Commune explains, “these pieces are as considered as any of our larger fixtures, built to be used daily, to hold weight and purpose, and to age with grace.”
Every accessory in the collection is made in our Brooklyn factory from solid, unlacquered brass—a material chosen not only for its strength but also for the way it changes with time. These objects are meant to patina, to develop richness, and to take on the life of the spaces they inhabit.
Our craftsman brazes the Origami Bin's seam in our Brooklyn factory.
A brass Paavo Cup is polished on a wheel in our finishing shop.
The accessory families echo histories of design while being firmly rooted in the present. Josef draws on the modernist rigor of Josef Hoffmann. Origami reinterprets the Japanese art of paper folding in faceted brass forms. Paavo pays homage to Finnish designer Paavo Tynell, whose poetic brass lighting defined a generation. Each family is a study in continuity: of traditions carried forward, reinterpreted, and transformed into something enduring.
These accessories weren’t conceived in isolation or purely for the marketplace. Commune originally designed them for use in their own projects where they were tested daily in real homes, offices, and interiors. That lived experience proved their durability, functionality, and enduring appeal. In other words, these objects are are proven companions, not prototypes, legitimized by years of use in demanding design settings.
This is design for daily ritual. Objects that invite touch, earn trust, and prove that the things we live with every day can be as useful as they are beautiful.
A Polished Nickel Josef Tray and Cup holds beauty tools and jewelry on a ladies' dressing table.
