As you can well imagine, I, Dr. Bulb can get rather worked up when I see an elegant lamp in a luminaire. For those less luminous, that is a pretty light bulb in a light fixture. Now most people probably don’t get that excited, so I was taken aback when Slate wrote about a beautiful new energy saving bulb, the Plumen 001.
The Plumen 001 is a unique lamp. Basically, the artist took the basic design of a spiral CFL lamp and changed the spiral to a free form design. The look is beautiful. The product sells. Slate raves. It is cool, but is at rave worthy?
The lamp is a compact fluorescent lamp. It uses Mercury, requires proper disposal, and is energy efficient only as compared to old incandescent lamps. It is also only a lamp, not a fixture, yet the cost is closer to a light fixture than a lamp.
Novelty, yes, but compared to LED lamps the only thing Plume has going for it is a good public relations campaign and pretty design. If I need a pretty lamp, I will wait for something interesting in LED to come out. If I am paying that kind of money, $29.99 per lamp, I want 50,000 hours or more as opposed to a bulb that does not even list the number of hours it will function.
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