Karl Zahn's work with materials developed out of his time spent playing in forests and wood shops in rural Vermont. After earning a degree in product design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003, he pursued his material exploration on the west coast as a metal fabricator for an interior architecture company with a design collection of their own. It was there that he first started working with lighting.

After moving to Brooklyn in 2007, Karl began pursuing his own product designs and building a career in the NY art and design community. In 2019, after a decade at the eponymous lighting company Lindsey Adelman Studio, he left his position as design director to focus on his own lighting projects, and on continuing collaborations with companies like Roll & Hill and AREAWARE. Currently his work can be found in homes around the world, and at the design gallery The Future Perfect and their locations in New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

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