On the first of December we opened a new showroom in Beijing, at Tower 2 of Wangjing SOHO in Chaoyang District. The street outside is loud and quick. Inside, the first thing people say — often before they say anything about the lamps at all — is how quiet the room feels.

Arranged for light, not for product

We left the ceiling dark and the walls unfinished, then gave each piece its own distance from the next. A wall washer grazes the plaster, so you can see what grazing does. A pendant hangs low over a table, at the height it would hang in a home. Nothing is stacked and nothing is crowded, because light needs empty space around it before it can be seen. The materials tell you where the hours went: hand-raised copper still carrying the small unevenness of the hammer, mouth-blown glass with a faint ripple that only appears once the lamp is lit, blackened iron waxed by hand until it feels warm rather than cold.

A bench in the middle of the room

In the centre we placed a long bench brought from our atelier, with tools laid out, off-cuts of brass in a tray and a shade half-formed on its jig. On most afternoons one of our makers sits there and works. Visitors are welcome to pull up a chair, ask whatever they like, or simply watch a flat piece of metal learn to hold light.

• Dim any lamp yourself and see how one room changes across four levels of light.
• Take a card of finishes home — copper, iron, aged brass, smoked glass.
• Bring a plan, a photograph, a difficult corner. We will sit down with it and talk.

Through the opening evening the room filled slowly: architects from the towers nearby, a handful of collectors who have followed our work for years, neighbours who came in out of curiosity and stayed an hour. One guest switched a lamp off and on again, three times, without saying anything. We took that as the best review of the night.

The showroom is open every day, nine in the morning until six in the evening. There is no appointment to make and nothing to buy on your way out. Come and sit at the bench for a while. Light asks very little of us — only that we slow down enough to notice it.