Raised in Chicago, Stephen Burks studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), product design at IIT’s Institute of Design, and he pursued graduate studies in architecture at Columbia University in New York. In 1997, he founded his Brooklyn-based studio, Readymade Projects, where he designs retail interiors, events, packaging, consumer products, lighting, furniture, and home accessories. Burks has developed innovative concepts for leading, internationally-known design brands and he is a design activist, committed to sustainable design in the developing world through his association with the American non-profits, Aid To Artisans and the Nature Conservancy. Since 2005, he has also worked as a consultant, collaborating with artisans around the world in Australia, India, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Senegal to build a bridge from developing world artisanry to first world distribution. In 2007, Burks designed the “Tatu” wire table collection, which is produced by hand in South Africa for Artecnica's Design With Conscience program. In 2008, he designed Cappellini's first eco-conscious collection, also artisanally produced in South Africa by a community collective, Mandela Mosaics, in the township of Nelson Mandela's birth. Burks employs a diversity of materials in his designs, ranging from metals, wood, and fiber to, more recently, glass. At the 2011 Cologne Furniture Fair, the French contemporary furniture manufacturer Ligne Roset launched their first product designed by Burks. The “Chantal” glass table lamp is literally ready-made. Its combination of inverted vase and bowl forms reflects Burks’s characteristic practice of combining and recombining familiar forms to create new, totemic forms. In 2011, Burks also participated in the Museum’s design program, GlassLab, at the Vitra Design Museum during the contemporary art fair, Art Basel. This lamp is part of an open edition.