Founded by designer Nick Trudel, Juba is a Montreal-based design studio thoughtfully creating objects with character, material depth, and a strong sense of presence. The studio's flagship design, the TL-1 table lamp is now available at Lights Canada.
Rather than treating lighting as purely functional, Juba approaches it as an emotional element within a space. Brightness and output matter, but light’s subtler qualities matter just as much. It moves through a room, interacts with material, and shifts the ambience around it.
A New Canadian Design Studio at Lights Canada
Juba was born from Trudel's years working in architectural lighting and his ongoing fascination with light as a medium. For him, lighting exists beyond the object itself. Instead, it must be understood within the context of the space in which it interplays and occupies. That way of thinking shaped the foundation of Juba. The studio's work is rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and a desire to create designs that feel honest to the present moment. Instead of referencing older design eras, Juba looks at the materials, tools, and technologies available today, then uses them with intention.
"I wanted to make a lamp that says: this is an LED lamp with substance, with confidence, with integrity."
Meet the TL-1 Table Lamp
The TL-1 table lamp is Juba's first product, and it introduces the studio's design philosophy in one complete object. Part sculpture, part ambient light source, TL-1 is made to evoke a mood wherever it is placed. Picture it adding warmth to a credenza, a bedside table, treasured display shelf, or quiet office corner.
"It's meant to be a light sculpture more than a light source," says Trudel.
That idea defines TL-1 as a lamp made to shape the mood of a room. Its soft, reflected glow brings a calm, candle-like warmth. Running at 2400K with a CRI of 95 or higher, it renders colour similarly to the way candlelight does – warmly and with a depth that changes how a room feels after dark.
The Beauty of Reflected Light
One of the most distinctive things about TL-1 is the way it handles light, and the thinking behind it goes deeper than aesthetics.
“I was looking at satellite dishes, actually, the inverse of one. In architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright famously used reflected indirect light to create beautiful spaces, but it’s almost never done in table lamps,” says Trudel.
TL-1 brings that architectural approach into a domestic form. Instead of shining directly outward, the lamp uses a reflector to bounce light back into the room, creating a soft, low-glare effect that fills the surrounding space without feeling harsh or overly bright.
“It provides a glow, not illumination,” he says.
Placed in a corner, the lamp casts a subtle luminescence onto the wall behind it. Placed more centrally, it becomes a sculpture to look at and live with, adding character whether it’s on or off. Viewed from behind the acetate reflector, Trudel describes it as almost like peering into another world.
Why Cellulose Acetate Makes TL-1 Unique
The material story is central to TL-1, beginning with its cellulose acetate reflector. Made from wood pulp and cotton fibres, cellulose acetate is more commonly associated with objects like eyewear, but its translucency gives it a rare quality when used with light. Each sheet is produced through a highly manual process, leaving natural variation in tone, density, and depth. When illuminated, those internal layers come forward in subtle gradients. Just as in nature, No two pieces look exactly alike.
This material choice is also made possible by LED technology. Because cellulose acetate is sensitive to high heat, it has not traditionally been used in lighting. With LED, Juba is able to explore the material in a new way, allowing its natural translucency and character to become part of the lamp's signature glow.
The origin of that material decision goes back nearly a decade, to a school project Trudel worked on about cradle-to-cradle manufacturing. His belief then, and still now, is that truly environmental design has to start with beauty. "You have to make things people actually want to use," he says. "The environmental piece should be secondary, not the selling point."
A Balance of Ethereal, Precise, and Grounded Materials
TL-1 brings together three distinct materials that each play a specific role: cellulose acetate, mirror-polished machined aluminium, and a cast mineral-composite base.
The cellulose acetate reflector feels ethereal and expressive, with a translucent quality that works beautifully with light. The mirror-polished aluminium stem adds precision and geometric clarity, creating a sharp contrast with the softness of the reflector, and contributing to the lamp's overall play with light. The mineral-composite base grounds the lamp visually and physically, cast from natural stone powders and finished by hand with a rough, dense surface that gives the piece a sense of weight and permanence.
The construction is equally considered. Rather than using screws to join the aluminium stem, Juba uses a dovetail joint, a manufacturing method that's honest to the material and process. It's a small detail, but it reflects how intentionally the whole lamp is conceived and constructed.
Together, the materials create a balance of softness, clarity, and warmth. The piece feels refined without feeling sterile, sculptural without feeling impractical, and contemporary without feeling cold.
Designed and Handcrafted in Montreal
Juba's Montreal roots are an important part of the story, as is the way each lamp is handmade to order. TL-1 is assembled in Montreal in limited quantities, using a hybrid process that includes casting, machining, forming, and manual assembly. The mineral-composite base is cast in small batches and finished by hand, while the aluminium structure is precision-machined. The cellulose acetate reflector is cut from flat sheet stock using a proprietary machining process, then slump-formed in an oven, a hands-on process that gives each lamp its individual character.
"Montreal isn't a showy city. There's this beautiful culture of making cool things for the sake of making, not for market or show."
That spirit comes through in TL-1. It feels thoughtful, tactile, and made with care, with a presence that reflects both the studio's vision and the city it comes from.
How to Style TL-1 at Home
TL-1 is best suited to spaces in which the atmosphere is curated and considered. In a living room, it can sit on a side table, console, or credenza to create an evening glow. Dim it low and it becomes something closer to a candle than a lamp, something you engage with while listening to music or winding down for the night. In a bedroom, it brings warmth and visual interest without the harshness of direct task lighting. In a corner, the translucency of the acetate projects light onto the wall behind it, creating a soft luminescence that makes the whole room feel different.
Because TL-1 is dimmable with an inline knob, it can shift with the mood of the room. The range runs from a full ambient wash down to a quiet background glow, giving you real control over how the lamp lives in your space.
TL-1 comes in two colourways: Heaven and Earth. Heaven features a pale, translucent acetate reflector that glows softly and evenly when lit, with an airy, almost minimal quality. Earth uses a darker acetate with a rich tortoiseshell-like pattern of green, amber, and black that becomes dramatic and almost cinematic when illuminated. Both highlight the natural variation and depth that makes each reflector unique, but they bring very different moods to a room.
Discover Juba at Lights Canada
With TL-1, Juba introduces a thoughtful new voice in Canadian lighting design. It's a lamp made for people who see lighting as more than a functional necessity. It's for those who want to curate places with presence, atmosphere, and a story behind them.
Designed and handcrafted in Montreal, TL-1 brings together material experimentation, reflected light, and small-batch production in one sculptural form.
Explore Juba and shop the TL-1 table lamp now at Lights Canada.
For more on Nick Trudel’s process and the story behind TL-1, read the full Q&A with Juba’s founder.
