A hall with tall windows

Design Days came round again at the end of May, and we took a ground-floor hall for the three of them. Everything arrived by hand, wrapped in blankets, one lamp per trip. The windows were tall and the glass was old, so daylight came in soft and slightly grey. We liked that. Our work only reads properly against a wall that is not competing with it.

We set the room the evening before and then sat in it until the light outside went. That is the part visitors never see: the long argument about how dark the ceiling should stay. The Aureole hung low above the table. Two Vela lamps stood on plinths near the entrance, and the Eclipse went onto a panel we had painted that same week, still faintly smelling of pigment.

Two rooms in one, by the hour

Until five the hall belonged to the sun. Then the sun thinned and our pieces took the room over, one by one, until it was a different place holding the same furniture. People stayed for that crossing. They also asked us the same three questions, day after day:

• Why one surface looks brushed in a corner and almost wet in the middle.
• How long a shade stays on the bench before we let it leave.
• Which of our lamps behaves well in a room with no other light at all.

The third question is our favourite, because it asks about essence: what remains of a lamp when nothing flatters it. The answer we gave at that table, in the half dark, was that a piece should hold a room with two or three quiet pools of light and leave the rest in shadow. Form is decided by the dark as much as by the bright.

On the Monday the hall was empty again and we carried it all back out. Three days, and a list of things to try next year. Light is generous that way. It stays where you put it, and then it goes.