Dezeen Showroom: Kyiv-based architect and designer Victoriya Yakusha is celebrating the cultural heritage of her native Ukraine with a lighting collection modelled after sunflowers.
Created for her furniture brand Faina, the Soniah range is a homage to the country's national flower and includes a sconce, floor and pendant lamp in different heights and sizes.
Each features a sweeping, circular shade that is tilted inquisitively towards the viewer like the flower turns towards to the sun.
The sconce features a textured, circular shade
The lights' textured, whitewashed finish is created from clay that has been fortified with wood chips, straw and recycled paper to create a material that Yakusha has dubbed Ztista or 'made of dough'.
"Based on the philosophy of live design, Faina has a strong connection to the earth and the living world around us, so we work with live and natural materials," she told Dezeen. "Ztista is a sustainable material that is very flexible and offers many design opportunities because it can be moulded into almost any shape."
Soniah also comes as a freestanding floor lamp
For the Soniah range, the material is applied to a frame of reclaimed steel in thick layers, following a traditional construction technique known as valkuvannya.
This was historically used to build the kind of clay huts that were common in much of the Ukraine and the surrounding region before stone and brick became popular at the start of the 20th century.

Unfired cl...