The Pillar – Alabaster Column Lamp

The Pillar

A column of stone with a bulb inside it. That is the whole idea. Unlit, the Pillar is a pale, slightly waxy cylinder that could pass for plaster from across the room. Switch it on and the wall of the stone lights up amber from the inside, and the horizontal bands you could not see a moment ago come out one after another, some sharp, some blurred like watercolour.

It is tall and slim, closed at the top, and runs on mains electricity. It is not a candle holder. The light comes from a bulb fitted inside the body and reaches you through the stone itself, which is what an alabaster lamp does that a paper shade cannot: it reads warm rather than bright. Put it on a sideboard, or on the floor beside a chair for the evenings.

The stone is Egyptian alabaster. Strictly it is calcite, a banded travertine laid down in layers by water moving through limestone caves, which is where the stripes come from. Hardness about 3 on the Mohs scale. Soft enough to work with hand tools, harder than the gypsum alabaster used elsewhere. Each Pillar's stone column is cut from one solid block and hollowed out, and nothing in it is cast or moulded. The column then sits on a turned wooden base. Because no two blocks are alike, the colour, veining and how much light gets through will differ from the photograph. Some come out honey, some nearly white.

Specifications

• Material: solid Egyptian alabaster (calcite) body, hand carved in Luxor, on a turned wooden base
• Type: electric column lamp, internal bulb, closed top
• Size M: approx. 900 g
• Size L: approx. 1500 g
• 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 will etch it.

Where it comes from

Carved in Luxor, Upper Egypt, mostly in workshops on the west bank of the Nile near the tombs this stone was first quarried for. Egypt has taken alabaster from this region since antiquity, and the same stone turns up in museum cases as jars and bowls.

We keep our stock in Amsterdam and post from there. Nothing travels from Egypt to reach you. Inside the EU that means days rather than weeks, and no customs charge on arrival.