Introduced in the year 2000 by Mathmos, the Fluidium was created by industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, and it certainly stands out from the brand’s other modern offerings: here we find not a polished metal base but a partially translucent polycarbonate; not the typical variety of wax and fluid colorways we might expect from other lamps (blue and purple, yellow and pink, orange and yellow…) but curated, minimal waxes matching the base and cap’s color submerged in clear fluid. The Fluidium might put one in mind of a rocket as other Mathmos styles aim to, but its silhouette is more abstract, organic. It lives in simplicity.
According to a Mathmos Facebook post, the model’s final production run was in 2016. It can occasionally be found second-hand, usually for $150 to $300. In 2016, the Fluidium retailed for £65.00.
MY REVIEW:
It has been some time since I’ve written a lava lamp review; times have been hard on the personal side of things, my excitement decreased, and – though it may not seem that way on first blush – these reviews are actually rather taxing for me to write. But the Fluidium has remained on my mind: it is my most desired lava lamp, the last holy grail of my collection. My ambitions to own it have been long rebuffed by the rarity of the lamp and the price point at which it is resold. I felt I owed it to the Fluidium, which so occupies my thoughts, to at least give it a review.
SILHOUETTE: 10/10
When I’ve shown people pictures of the Fluidium (which I’m prone to do), it has sometimes gotten a few laughs. People have compared it to a sex toy or a suppository. Here, I aim not to defend it from such comments. Sure: the Fluidium is a bit phallic. Does that need defending against? The lamp feels organic, alive; it emerges from its base like a natural growth. Its very silhouette resembles the shape of the wax within it rising up into a bubble. The Fluidium renders the lava lamp a fact of nature, an inevitability. It is utterly legible; it makes sense. And yes, it is sensual. It is my belief that lava lamps are very sensual objects (stay tuned, if I were to get around to it, for my top 10 list of most erotic lava lamps!), and the Fluidium leans into that sensuality gracefully, luxuriates in it with nonchalance.
DETAILS: 9/10
It’s difficult to review the detailing of the Fluidium, because it is striking mainly through its lack thereof – the absence of ornamentation is its very strength. I appreciate the use of the polycarbonate base and cap, rather than metal – an off-brand copy of the Fluidium, the Balvi Magma, uses the same shape but swaps in metallic bases and caps (and more classic colorways), and the stylishness and appeal of the Balvi Magma is significantly decreased by these modifications. It is in observing its pale imitator that the Fluidium’s elegance and restraint shines the most. I however deduct one point for the stria along the base of the model – I assume they are structural, but I feel the minimalism of the model would have been polished by their absence.
A Balvi Magma lava lamp. I mean... It's just not the same, is it?
COLORWAYS: 10/10
The Fluidium only came in four colors: green, yellow, white, orange. I have seen a few pictures floating around of modified Fluidiums, caps and bases painted other colors, waxes and fluids swapped out… Though I want to be supportive of the spirit of modification and customization of the lava lamp community, I can’t help but look at these modded Fluidiums as abominations. It was already perfect!, I want to scream. It never needed purple fluid or a cartoonish mix of green and orange! It was already everything it needed to be: the right colors, the restraint not to bombast, the intentionality of a design that does not need to appeal to everyone, to offer every color. The Fluidium’s limited colorways are purposeful and complete; there are no others I would wish to see it in.
(I chose not to include pictures of modded Fluidiums out of respect for their owners since I have nothing good to say about them, but you can find plenty such pictures with a Google search.)
POWER: 8/10
To me, the Fluidium is one of the most powerful lava lamps – but I feel to give it a 10 here would betray its design ethos. The model is not here to blow you away, to draw all attention to itself. It is almost discreet, an accessory rather than a centerpiece. Its appeal lies in the very fact it is not the most powerful, the most impressive lamp out there. Rather, it would fit into a space easily, slot itself wherever it is set as if it was always meant to be there, this strange, beautiful fungal light.
MY FINAL LAVA SCORE: 9.25/10
Is my information wrong? Did I miss a detail? Do you have a better picture of this model? Is there another model you’d like me to look into? Please send me an ask or submit relevant pictures!
The history of the lava lamp can be quite muddled and confusing to approach. From its original invention to its manufacturing and sale, who exactly “did it first” is often unclear. Two lava lamp companies, Lava Lite and Mathmos, are said to be the originators of the lava lamp, and both draw their histories back to inventor Edward Craven Walker… Who himself is disputed as the true inventor of the lava lamp.
So, what’s the real story?
Well, it starts sometime in the 1940s with a Scot by the name of Donald Dunnet, a motor engineer living in South East England. Little information is available on Dunnet, and the most helpful source on him and his inventions is his great-grandson Charlie Leverett, who along with his father and aunt have tried to piece together accurate information on Dunnet and his invention.
According to an old (unfortunately dateless) newspaper article, which the family uses as a source, the original invention came about when Felicity, Dunnet’s youngest daughter and Charlie Leverett’s grandmother, broke the family’s egg-timer, coincidentally while there was a wartime shortage of egg-timers in the UK. Dunnet, who was described as a part-time inventor, set out to build a replacement – imagining, instead of sand falling down to measure time, a controlled rising of oil to the surface of water. This “inverted egg-timer” would therefore be the very first lava lamp prototype.
It would not, however, be the last prototype created by Donald Dunnet. In December 1950, Dunnet applied for a patent granted in 1954 for “a display device using liquid bubbles in another liquid” – making no reference to time measurement, it can be assumed that at this point the invention no longer had anything to do with egg-timers and was instead meant to be an aesthetically pleasing display.
The abstract further describes the invention as “a display device [which] comprises an upper layer of liquid 2 and a lower layer of liquid 3 in a transparent container 1, the two liquids being non-miscible and the upper layer being of lower specific gravity than the lower layer and means 9 for heating the lower layer so that it rises through the upper layer in the form of liquid bubbles […], the bubbles being cooled by the upper layer so that they return to the lower layer.”
Further technical detail is added, but with this initial description, you may already have recognized the basic workings of a lava lamp: wax or oil heated by a light bulb at the bottom of the lamp bubbles up through the fluid filling the container (typically water); the bubbles cool down as they reach the top of the lamp and fall back to the bottom, creating a continuous flow of 'lava'.
While there are no other patents I could find for further iterations on this invention, Dunnet continued to improve on his design. The family was able to find one picture of various models created by Dunnet: one resembles a large glass jug, one a long-necked, bulbous bottle, and three resemble lanterns (interestingly, lantern designs would later be sold by both Lava Lite and Crestworth). The picture is dated "Easter 1960".
Dunnet was even featured on “The BBC Inventors Club” (date of broadcast unknown) for another of his inventions, seemingly his “cleaner for flat surfaces” patented in 1955, pictured here:
According to Dunnet’s grandson, in the 1960s, the family still owned and used one of Dunnet’s lamps, which he says “worked really well and was well developed, quite far removed from his original ‘egg timer’ based design”. He further describes this lamp as using “a Grant’s whiskey bottle with Red lava”. He also declared his intention to create a replica of this prototype based on his memories of it, but it seems pictures of such a replica never materialized.
Sadly, Donald Dunnet passed away sometime between 1960 and 1964, and would never market his invention himself. According to his grandson, his widow had his workshop completely cleared after his death, and no surviving prototypes remain. Still – thanks to newspaper articles, family testimony, the 1950s patent, and the surviving photographs of Donald Dunnet and his inventions, it seems clear that he was the true original inventor of the lava lamp, though not the one who would come to market it to the public.
Unfortunately, Dunnet seems to have been widely forgotten from lava lamp history, with many sources not mentioning him at all, and only his initial egg-timer prototype being briefly credited as inspiring Edward Craven Walker in other sources. It seems Dunnet’s family passed on his story through generations and often spoke of his invention as being stolen, though his granddaughter Linda Leverett is “not sure what really happened”, and the family primarily expresses wishing that he was better known and recognized for his creations. You can take a look at various other patents held by Dunnet here.
So then, who is this Edward Craven Walker we keep hearing about?
Edward Craven Walker (1918-2000) was a British inventor, now known as the creator of the lava lamp. In 1963, Craven Walker found himself at the Queen’s Head pub in Dorset, England. There, he spotted a “blob light” on the bar, described as “a glass cocktail shaker full of oil and water with a light bulb beneath”. This was one iteration of Dunnet’s invention – already no longer an egg-timer as is often claimed, but instead a decorative item.
Craven Walker, learning that Dunnet had died, decided to take on the further development of the lamp himself. He hired British inventor David George Smith to further develop the device. In 1964, Smith applied for a patent assigned to Craven Walker’s company ‘Crestworth Limited’ and granted in 1968, for “a display device comprising a container having two substances therein, with one of the substances being of a heavier specific gravity and immiscible with the other substance […] and when heat is applied to the container, the first substance will become flowable and move about in the other substance”.
Craven Walker named this lamp the “Astro Lamp”, and this model was sold by Crestworth starting in 1963, making it the first commercial lava lamp.
The Crestworth Astro and its variations (such as the Astro Mini) have defined the classic look of lava lamps ever since. They were greatly successful throughout the 1960s and 1970s and are now icons of the era. Crestworth would be renamed Mathmos in 1992, and Mathmos is still one of the two best-known lava lamp companies in the world.
So, what’s with Lava Lite and its claim of being “the original lava lamp company”?
In the end, it’s simply a case of international manufacturing rights. In 1965, Craven Walker sold the US manufacturing rights of his Astro Lamp to two American entrepreneurs, Adolph Wertheimer and Hy Spector, who saw the lamp at a novelty convention in Hamburg, West Germany. Wertheimer and Spector founded the Lava Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago, Illinois, and the Astro Lamp was renamed the Lava Lite and brought to the US market. In the 1970s, the rights to the Lava Lite were sold to Haggerty Enterprises, and it would be distributed by a subsidiary called Lava World International. Lava World International was later renamed Lava Lite LLC. Finally, the Lava Lamp brand was acquired by toy manufacturer Schylling in 2018. This brand, often referred to as “Lava Lite”, is the other big player in the lava lamp world. Because both Mathmos and Lava Lite originate from Craven Walker’s initial Astro Lamp, both brands still lay claim to “the original lava lamp”.
So that’s the story of the lava lamp, as best as I’ve been able to piece it together! An original invention by Donald Dunnet, developed by Edward Craven Walker, and sold in the US by Lava Lite and internationally by Mathmos. A simple but ingenious device, originally only meant as an egg-timer, which would become an icon of the 60s and the 70s, and remains popular to this day.
Did I get something wrong? Am I missing details? Do you have more information on lava lamp history? Feel free to reach out with an ask or submission!
Sources:
The History of the Astro Lamp - Designs by Donald Dunnet - FlowOfLava
The History of the Lava Lamp - Smithsonian Magazine
Donald Dunnet - Original Lava Lamps Inventor by Charlie Leverett on OozingGoo
