Tete Lamp

Tête is the French for head, and the name suits a lamp meant to be looked at as much as switched on. This one sits in the small sculptural tradition rather than the shade-on-a-stick tradition — a shaped table light that holds its own as an object in daylight and only starts doing its actual job once the room goes dim. It belongs on a bedside table, a hall console, the far corner of a desk or the shelf behind a sofa, in the sort of spot where the quality of the light matters more than the quantity of it. Lamps have become one of the more satisfying things to make at home, largely because a shaped shade is an expensive thing to buy and a straightforward thing to produce yourself. A single file here, and an obvious candidate for making twice.