Designer Ed Carpenter reflects on how the pigeon-shaped lamp he presented at his graduation show in 2001 became a bestseller in museums and design shops around the world.

Carpenter designed the Pigeon Light while studying at London's Royal College of Art in response to a brief to create a new souvenir for London.

The lamp consists of an acrylic plastic shell ? vacuum-formed into the shape of the ubiquitous urban bird ? and a simple wooden clothes peg attached to a dowel, which enables it to be clamped onto a shelf or nail in the wall.

"It's a very simple design," Carpenter explains in the movie, which Dezeen filmed at his studio in London.

"It was to do with how I could produce it myself in the workshop at the RCA with the tools at my disposal, so I had to think of it as a very basic and simple object."
Carpenter produced 30 Pigeon Lights to sell at his graduation show and soon realised he had a hit on his hands.

"As soon as the show opened, literally after an hour I had sold all 30 I'd made and had orders booked for another 30, so I kind of knew I was on to something," he explains.

"Obviously at the time I had no idea it would become somewhat of a design icon."

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