The Column – Frosted Alabaster Table Lamp

The Column

A rounded lamp of Egyptian alabaster, hollowed out and fitted for a bulb. It is fuller through the middle than at either end, tapering in towards the foot and closed over the top with a soft dome. Four sizes, from a small one that sits on a bedside table to a large one with real presence on a sideboard.

The finish is frosted, not polished, and that choice changes what the lamp does with light. A polished piece shows its banding hard and sharp when lit, every stripe drawn in amber. Frosting scatters the light as it leaves the stone, so you get a mottled, even glow instead of stripes, and the surface reads as clouded rather than striped. If you want visible banding, this is not the piece. If you want a lamp that glows like a paper lantern but weighs what stone weighs, it is.

The stone is calcite, a banded travertine laid down in layers by water moving through limestone caves. The trade has called it alabaster for a very long time. It is translucent, which is the whole point of making an alabaster lamp from it, and soft enough at Mohs 3 to be worked with hand tools.

The stone body is carved from one solid block, and nothing in it is cast or moulded. It then stands on a turned wooden disc base. Because every block differs in colour and translucency, yours will not match the photograph exactly. Some run paler, some carry more honey in them, and the larger sizes carry more stone for the light to travel through.

Four sizes

• S 8 cm across, 10 cm high
• M 8 cm across, 12 cm high
• L 10 cm across, 15 cm high
• XL 10 cm across, 20 cm high

All four take the same bulb and sit on the same style of turned wooden base. The difference is how much stone the light has to travel through, which is why the larger ones read warmer and deeper rather than simply brighter.

Specifications

• Material: Egyptian alabaster (calcite) body, frosted finish, on a turned wooden base
• Form: rounded table lamp with a closed domed top, widest through the middle
• Fitting: electric
• Light: soft diffused amber glow when lit, mottled rather than banded
• Bulb: E27 fitting. Bulb not included.
• Care: soft dry cloth. Keep away from prolonged water and never use acidic or abrasive cleaners; the stone is calcium-based and acid etches it.

Where it comes from

Carved in Luxor, in Upper Egypt. Most of the workshops sit on the west bank of the Nile, close to the tombs the stone was first quarried for. The stone has been quarried in Egypt since antiquity, from sites in the region around Luxor and in Middle Egypt, among them Hatnub, Wadi Gerrawi and Wadi el-Assiuti, several of which were worked as far back as the Predynastic period.

We hold stock here in Amsterdam and post from here. Nothing travels from Egypt to reach you. Delivery takes days rather than weeks, and there is no customs charge inside the EU.