The lights were custom made for a hospitality project with little money left in the budget - not nearly enough for a catalogue fitting. Making our own proved far more satisfying.
The piece sits easily by itself over a large table, or clustered together over a larger space. We crafted two sizes, 550 and300 in diameter respectively.
We sought a light that was at once formally simple and materially rich. It needed to have sufficient presence to hold a big dining table, but have a silhouette fine enough to sit quietly in a beautiful old room.
The piece reveals itself as one draws closer: a fine plane of swamp kauri shaped into a disc; off-cuts reused as butterflies and stitched into and stabilising old cracks; the finger-tip scaled hand tooling of a local wood turner follows the grain, catching light on the underside.
A fine brass rod pierces the disc and reaches up to meet the ceiling precisely: the traditional ceiling rose is rejected in favour of a flush setting with hidden, threaded joints. We worked hard to conceal the light source, a tiny, high powered, warm LED sequestered inside the stem of the rod.
Designers Emily Priest and Nat Cheshire
Photographer Sam Hartnett
Woodturner Gorden Pembridge
Electrical Intec
