> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.unknowndivide.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Mathmos x Sabine Marcelis Lava Lamp: A Mirrored Room of Giant Pink Columns, and an Astro That Sold Out - URL: https://www.unknowndivide.com/mathmos-sabine-marcelis-lava-lamp-column-astro/ - Published: 2026-11-10T12:12:02.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-10T12:12:02.000Z - Description: In Zurich, Sabine Marcelis has filled a mirrored room with eight giant pink lava lamps that seem to go on forever. The matching 1,000-piece Mathmos Astro is already gone. The giant version is still made to order, if your ceiling allows it. - Author: unknowndivide staff - Tags: Design The best lava lamp photo of the year is not a lamp on a sideboard. It is a mirrored room in Zurich with eight pink lava columns, each taller than most ceilings, reflected until the room seems to have no walls. That is the Mathmos lava room inside [Sabine Marcelis: Light and Color](https://museum-gestaltung.ch/en/exhibition/sabine-marcelis-light-and-color?ref=unknowndivide.com) at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, and the small pink Astro built to match it is already sold out. ## What Sabine Marcelis built in Zurich Light and Color is the Dutch designer's first museum exhibition, open from October 30, 2026 to April 4, 2027\. Marcelis, born in 1985, is known for making resin, glass and stone glow as if light were a material in its own right. For the lava room, [Mathmos](https://mathmos.com/press-release/mathmos-x-sabine-marcelis-2026/?ref=unknowndivide.com) says eight Column lamps stand 256 cm tall inside an installation of mirrors built for this show, all filled with a custom bubblegum pink lava. Marcelis put it simply: "I always wanted to design a giant lava lamp, that was the thought I had in my very first meeting with Mathmos." The lava room is not the only trick. The museum also has a walk-through tunnel made from 125 of her VARMBLIXT lights for IKEA, stretched to 11 meters by a mirror wall with a color gradient. ![Mathmos x Sabine Marcelis Column lava lamp, a tall matt white column with a frosted glass section, standing in a white brick room](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/41/254117cc-2631-4fb7-9f78-fa31eac12f1a/content/images/2026/11/mathmos-marcelis-column-lava-lamp.jpg) The Column in its home setting. Image: Mathmos (official) ## The Mathmos x Sabine Marcelis lava lamp you can still buy The [Column lava lamp](https://mathmos.com/product/mathmos-x-sabine-marcelis-column-lava-lamp/?ref=unknowndivide.com) is not a one-off for the museum. It is a production piece, handcrafted to order in Britain, and the numbers are wild for something most people picture on a bedside table. Standard height is 296 cm, which Mathmos can shorten to a minimum of 221 cm, and it needs at least 22 cm of clearance below the ceiling. The frosted borosilicate bottle alone is 70 cm tall, holds 18 liters of lava formula and weighs 23 kg of the lamp's 38 kg total. It ships in a wooden crate, takes two adults to assemble and arrives about three months after ordering. The Zurich columns use the Bubblegum lava; you can also order Peach or Honeydew green. The small one is gone. The [2026 limited edition Astro](https://mathmos.com/product/mathmos-x-sabine-marcelis-limited-edition-astro-lava-lamp-2026/?ref=unknowndivide.com), Marcelis's fourth Astro with Mathmos, went on sale at 11 am GMT on November 5 behind a waiting room, and the page now reads sold out. It was 1,000 numbered lamps in matt white with the same bubblegum lava, frosted glass, a pink fabric cable and a pink box, and Mathmos says her previous Astro editions sold out within hours. ![Mathmos x Sabine Marcelis 2026 limited edition Astro lava lamp with matt white base and frosted glass showing pink lava](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/41/254117cc-2631-4fb7-9f78-fa31eac12f1a/content/images/2026/11/mathmos-marcelis-astro-bubblegum.jpg) The 2026 limited edition Astro, 1,000 made. Image: Mathmos (official) ## Why the factory in Poole matters Here is the part most people do not know: the lava lamp was invented in Britain, and the company that invented it still makes it there. Edward Craven Walker founded Mathmos in 1963 and designed the original Astro that year. The lamps are still made in Poole, Dorset, every bottle hand-filled with the company's own formula, and Cressida Granger has run the company since 1989\. Marcelis went to the factory this summer to sign off the prototypes in person, which is why the frosted glass and the soft pink feel so considered rather than novelty. ![Sabine Marcelis holding a frosted lava lamp bottle on the Mathmos factory floor in Poole, Dorset](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/41/254117cc-2631-4fb7-9f78-fa31eac12f1a/content/images/2026/11/sabine-marcelis-mathmos-factory-poole.jpg) Marcelis at the Mathmos factory in Poole. Photo: Alun Callender, via Mathmos (official) ## Three ways to get her light at home - **Mathmos x Sabine Marcelis Column.** The real thing, for a double-height room, a studio or a shop. [Order it from Mathmos](https://mathmos.com/product/mathmos-x-sabine-marcelis-column-lava-lamp/?ref=unknowndivide.com). - **Mathmos 1960s Original Astro.** Not a Marcelis piece, but the 1963 shape her editions are built on, still made in Poole. [Shop the originals at Mathmos](https://mathmos.com/lava-lamps/1960s-original-lava-lamps/?ref=unknowndivide.com). - **IKEA VARMBLIXT round lamp.** Her best known everyday design, the orange glass ring that also lights the Zurich tunnel. [Shop it at IKEA](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/varmblixt-led-table-wall-lamp-orange-glass-round-90525150/?ref=unknowndivide.com). More about her studio is at [Studio Sabine Marcelis](https://sabinemarcelis.com/?ref=unknowndivide.com). For other lights worth living with, see our [best design lamps](https://www.unknowndivide.com/best-design-lamps/) and the story of [Noguchi's Akari](https://www.unknowndivide.com/isamu-noguchi-akari-light-sculptures-explained/), another case of a designer treating light as something you can shape. **Our call: skip the resale Astro, and buy the Column only if you have the ceiling.** The pink Astro is a lovely object, but a marked-up second-hand one is still a 43 cm lamp, and the regular Mathmos range is the same factory and the same craft. The Column is the real design statement here and it is not limited, so there is no rush, only a tape measure. For everyone else, the VARMBLIXT ring gets you Marcelis's way with light for the price of a dinner out, and if you are anywhere near Zurich before April 4, the lava room is the version worth the trip.