Mosaic Cube M

Mosaic Cube M

The medium mosaic cube, sold on its own. Unlike most of what we sell, this one is not carved from a single block. It is built up from dozens of small Egyptian alabaster tiles, cut by hand in Luxor and set edge to edge into a box. Where the tiles meet there is a seam.

Switch it on and those seams turn into a grid of thin bright lines while the tiles themselves glow amber, each a slightly different shade because each came from a different part of the stone. That is the point of building a lamp this way. A solid piece glows evenly; this one does not. You get warm patches and darker ones with a lattice of light running between them, and faint horizontal banding across individual tiles that was invisible in daylight.

The stone the trade calls Egyptian alabaster is really calcite, a banded travertine laid down in layers by water moving through limestone caves. It sits around 3 on the Mohs scale, soft enough to cut with hand tools but harder than the gypsum that alabaster technically refers to.

Specifications

• Size: medium, the smallest of the three cubes
• Material: hand-cut Egyptian alabaster (calcite) tiles
• Construction: tiled mosaic, not a single block. Nothing cast or moulded.
• Type: electric table lamp
• Bulb: E27 fitting. Bulb not included.
• Care: soft dry cloth only. Keep away from standing water and from acidic or abrasive cleaners; the stone is calcium-based and acid etches it.

Where it comes from

The tiles are cut and set in Luxor, Upper Egypt, mostly in workshops on the west bank of the Nile. 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 in Amsterdam and post from Amsterdam. Nothing travels from Egypt once you order. Delivery inside the EU takes days, not weeks, and there is no customs charge.