An unlikely culinary source of light

London, 2013: This ambitious – and dangerous – project poked pickled-shaped holes in conventional lighting concepts.

By passing mains current through a gherkin it will fizz, spark and glow with a ghostly green light – thanks to the interaction of electricity with the salt contained in pickle brine.

It’s simple enough to experiment with a single gherkin. But we spent a full week working with an electrical engineer to scale up this simple experiment to the scale of a chandelier. The final chandelier containing over 50 gherkins wired in parallel, each drawing 500W – enough power to light an entire street.

Film by Dave Lane and Jeremy Valender for Nowness.