Sabine Marcelis: Light, Colour and Material

Today I have been immersing myself in the work of Sabine Marcelis. Dutch-born but raised in New Zealand, Sabine brings her strong aesthetic style to product, installation and spatial design. Working from her studio in Rotterdam, she has a real fascination with materials, especially glass and resin, and with the way light can completely alter them. Her work illuminates and reflects, highlighting the material and providing a true sensory experience.

My initial encounter was with her laminated solar panels that create a sundial. Planted at a most majestic site, right in front of Egypt’s pyramids. The piece, called RA, was created for the 2023 Forever Is Now exhibition at Giza. Standing more than four metres high, it is made from laminated solar glass, creating a changing pattern of coloured light as the sun moves and storing solar energy so that it can continue to illuminate after dark. She works on a diverse range of projects, collaborating with the likes of IKEA, Céline, Stella McCartney and Renault.

It’s not all shiny, hard surfaces. Marcelis’ Boa Pouf is a seamless doughnut, softening those harder materials and forms. Her rugs are like tactile brush strokes, you just can’t help but caress. It is her lighting, though, that really stands out, perfectly comfortable in the world of fine art or illuminating the home.

There’s more to see too. A major exhibition of Marcelis’s work, Light and Color, opens at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich on 30th October 2026 and runs until 4th April 2027, bringing together her explorations of light, colour, reflection and material.

If you enjoy this kind of material-led design, you might also like our look at Michael Thonet’s Café Daum coat stand, where a very different material and manufacturing process became part of the design itself.

Emma first came across Sabine Marcelis through this article at Eclectic Trends.