"Your Childhood Pen Is Now a Giant Lamp"

Everyone knows the Bic pen. The clear hexagonal barrel, the colored cap, the way it writes without hesitation. It's been in backpacks, desk drawers, and forgotten coat pockets for 75 years. Over 100 billion sold. Part of MoMA's permanent collection. A design so familiar it's invisible.

Seletti just made it impossible to ignore.

twelve times the size, still unmistakable

The Italian brand took the Bic Cristal and blew it up to 12:1 scale, transforming a pocket tool into a floor lamp, pendant light, and wall fixture. The shape stays exact — same hexagonal body, same bold cap, same proportions that made the original feel right in your hand.

It comes in the colors you'd expect: black, red, and blue. The classics. Nothing subtle about a six-foot pen hanging from your ceiling, but that's exactly the point.

Seletti calls it memory-driven design. Taking objects that live in collective consciousness and giving them new purpose. The Bic lamp isn't trying to reinvent lighting. It's celebrating something that already worked, amplifying it until it demands attention instead of disappearing into a drawer.

when the mundane becomes monumental

There's something satisfying about seeing everyday objects taken seriously. The Bic pen never needed validation — László Bíró's ballpoint mechanism was genius when he conceived it in 1930, and Marcel Bich's 1950 refinement made it flawless. A stainless steel one-millimeter sphere delivering ink with zero friction. Perfect design, accessible price, ubiquitous presence.

But ubiquity makes things invisible. We stop seeing what's always there.

Seletti's lamp forces a double take. It's absurd in the best way — functional nostalgia that doesn't take itself too seriously. The kind of piece that makes guests pause and smile before they even ask where you got it.

This isn't about irony. It's about recognition. That pen was part of your childhood, your first job, every grocery list and phone number scribbled in a margin. Making it monumental feels earned.

pop spirit with purpose

Seletti has always excelled at this — mixing domestic vernacular with playful energy. Their work sits between art and product, serious enough to respect but loose enough to enjoy. The Bic lamp fits perfectly into that ethos.

"We have always played with the concept of memory-driven design, placing people's personal memories at the centre of the objects we create," says Seletti art director Stefano Seletti. "With 'Bic Lamp', we transform a universally and instantly recognizable shape that lives in everyone's memory, into something completely new."

The result is lighting that feels less like decor and more like a statement about what deserves to be elevated. Not everything needs to be precious or minimal. Sometimes the best design is the kind that's been working quietly for decades, just waiting for someone to notice.

The Bic Lamp collection is available in floor, pendant, and wall versions across all three colorways. It's the kind of piece that makes a room feel less serious and more lived-in — proof that good design doesn't always whisper.

For more, visit Seletti.

Where the everyday becomes unforgettable.

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