Feb 12 2008
Lamina Lighting Incorporated (Lamina), an innovator of LED lighting systems and technologies, today announced that their SoL MR16 LED has been included in the specifications for jewelry cabinetry lighting for Cartier, the renowned French jeweler and watchmaker based in Paris. Lamina’s SoL MR16 LED is currently being installed in new cabinetry under construction for Cartier’s latest retail shop in Brussels, Belgium, and will be utilized in all new cabinetry for subsequent stores.
“Cartier chose Lamina’s SoL MR16 LED for two reasons,” said Sylvain Chabot, Managing Director for JC Lampes SRL, the French distributor for Lamina LEDs and a subsidiary of Eleanor Group, the Lamina distributor throughout Europe. “The quality of light is exceptional in its ability to show the jewelry at its best, and using the SoL makes maintenance very easy.”
“We are very proud that a respected name such as Cartier will settle for nothing less than Lamina’s SoL MR16 LED,” said Frank M. Shinneman, President and CEO of Lamina. “It is truly a testament to the clear superiority and innovation, in a number of aspects, that Lamina’s products represent.”
JC Lampes worked in conjunction with Cartier’s lighting designer/adviser and Lamina to have the SoL specified for use in the cabinetry. Samples of the LED were first sent to the Cartier designer, who tested the fixture and eventually decided to make the product the standard in all Cartier cabinets. JC Lampes is now working with Cartier’s furniture manufacturer to supply the Lamina fixtures for all new cabinets that are ordered.
“Cartier has a very specific need in terms of color rendering for their lighting,” said Chabot. “They want the SoL MR16 LED with a very particular binning number, because that’s the one that creates the correct color of white light to show the jewelry most beautifully.” Binning is a practice used by LED manufacturers to sort the product according to their differing criteria. Lighting designers looking for distinct color parameters in the LEDs as a component of their lighting system can refer to binning numbers when ordering lighting fixtures to produce very specific characteristics – consistently.
Maintenance was also a key factor in selecting the Lamina SoL as the Cartier standard. “The fiber optic lighting used previously by Cartier required yearly maintenance that was difficult and costly,” said Chabot. “The Lamina fixtures will last for a minimum of 5 years, and if you have to change the lamp you just open the cabinet and pop in a new one.”
The Lamina SoL MR16 LED integrates a high power LED light source, optical lens and thermal heat sink shell in a traditional MR16 halogen form-factor. Its innovative design, which fits most existing fixtures and is designed to provide the quality of light produced by traditional incandescent lamps, produces as much light as a comparable 20-watt halogen bulb, but consumes less than 8 watts of electricity.