At first, Matthew McCormick was only “designing for fun,” he says, but that hobby “revealed itself as the only natural way to evolve all my ideas.” A chandelier he created that hung in his apartment attracted the attention of a friend who commissioned a custom piece for a local restaurant. From there, McCormick’s designs started to gain traction and he outgrew the abandoned parking lot he was using to craft his pieces, moving into his father-in-law’s garage and eventually opening his own studio in 2013. He released his first full collection two years later, and now, his products are coveted the world over, adorning hotels in Dubai, restaurants in Australia, and even a cannabis dispensary in Portland, Oregon. Lighting had been a “longtime obsession for me,” he says, “but I never expected to do it as a fulltime job.”
After studying technology at Ryerson University in Toronto, McCormick’s career began at Best Buy in Vancouver as a creative director. He was moonlighting as a lighting designer, but began to tire of the 9-to-5 grind, and found that “the physicality of working with my hands on real objects made me come alive,” the Toronto-born designer says.
His Halo series, for instance, is a mélange of dramatic cascading circular lights, while the jewelry-inspired modular Dawn chandelier is made with custom handblown glass tubes. Mila, his latest, marries handblown pearl-like spheres with the geometry of its bent metal form. “My pieces present very clean lines,” he explains. “Their beauty is very architectural and relies heavily on geometry, precision, and balance.”
McCormick continues to find inspiration in lighting’s versatility, as well as his peers. “My motto is that two minds are better than one,” he says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without having collaborated with brilliant people.”
McCormick’s Halo series can be suspended in a variety of compositions to highlight its elegant, circular shapes. Photography by Thompson Chan and courtesy of Matthew McCormick
