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" &amp;quot;My work is about the idea of subtraction,&amp;quot; says Michael Anastassiades of the lighting, furniture, jewelry, and tabletop pieces he designs at his riverfront studio in London&amp;#039;s Waterloo district. &amp;quot;An object stripped down to the bare essentials is the ultimate expression of beauty.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s a sentiment one might not expect from someone trained in civil engineering and industrial design, but the native Cypriot doesn&amp;#039;t ignore the principles of those disciplines: form, usability, and ergonomics. Anastassiades is passionate about the intrinsic qualities of whatever material he is working in, whether it&amp;#039;s bronze, brass, glass, or wood. Indeed, he&amp;#039;s found a like-minded partner in Lobmeyr, the venerable Austrian crystal and lighting manufacturer, with whom he will launch a collection this year.  Anastassiades, whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert, often pushes his designs to the point of abstraction. The lightbulb in his bronze Ball Light isn&amp;#039;t immediately recognizable; it looks like part of the fixture itself. One might mistake his brass Ball Vase for a bowling ball if it weren&amp;#039;t for the lack of a third hole. He cites the &amp;quot;fluidity&amp;quot; of the bentwood furniture designs of Thonet as inspiration for the frame of his Corner Mirror, a manufacturing marvel of glass hand-poured over a plaster form and kiln-fired. The deceptive simplicity of the designer&amp;#039;s counterbalanced floor mobiles\u2014some involve as many as 76 components, each hand-turned on a lathe and individually finished\u2014exemplify Anastassiades&amp;#039;s approach. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s always the objects that appear to be the most effortless to make that require the most effort,&amp;quot; he says. Perhaps that&amp;#039;s why he counts the first man-made stone tools among his favorite objects: &amp;quot;Their sole purpose is to perform a function, but they are also simple and beautiful.&amp;quot;  Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Balancing Act.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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