New York based Sam Stewart is known for his considered and witty referential objects. His new ruffled cotton lamps based on Elizabethan collars are connected to the artist’s ongoing interest in the symbolism of dress and aspirational, ostentatious ornamentation throughout history. The ruffled collar began in Elizabethan times as a fashionable symbol of wealth and excess for the wearer. In the modern era it’s more likely to be associated with the humiliated look of our pets, post surgery, peering out from the clear plastic cone adorning their necks—a symbol of forced restraint and prevention for the animal, and a new signifier of wealth for the pet owner. The glowing, disembodied ‘E-Collar’ lamps will be displayed in small but variable human-height groupings. The randomness of the composition is suggestive of the way people naturally form into conversation at a party or opening.