Finding the Light

I can remember exactly where I was the first time I heard a Beatles song.  I was seven years old.  I can remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’, Viktor Lazlo’s ‘Sweet, Soft and Lazy’ and Keiko Matsui’s ‘Tears from the Sun’  And I can remember exactly where I was when I turned over a page of a House & Garden magazine about 18 months ago and fell in love with this light:

I wish I knew what it is that makes one especially drawn to a particular item.  I cannot begin to explain what it is that immediately attracted me to this light fitting but the minute I saw it, I wished I could have one just like it and thought it might look perfect in my new stairwell.  I know where the Jamb showroom is in London and thought I might be able to collect the fitting and bring it back to South Africa myself.  But all that was before I checked the price.  It was just not going to happen.

Bernard had suggested that a chandelier might be good in the stairwell but I just hadn’t been able to find one that ‘felt’ right.  And I looked around a lot.

Just not me.

A globe – sort of – but not me either.

Delos in Cape Town is a great place to visit and they have no shortage of chandeliers. Occupying the old St Mary’s chapel –  built over a hundred years ago – in Albert Road, Woodstock, Delos is filled with fascinating artefacts and antiques.

The Delos Yard

Delos workshop (photo from SA House and Leisure magazine)

I went there several times but in the end found the selection almost overwhelming and nothing appealed to me as much as the ‘Globe’ from Jamb.

Beautiful French Antique chandelier at Delos. But not right for me.

Then on a visit to London a full year ago, I visited the Petersham Nursery Garden in Richmond and look what I found – completely unexpectedly – in the indoor section:

At Petersham Nurseries

It’s almost the same as Jamb’s but considerably less expensive.  Once again I debated the options of getting one home but it did seem like quite a lot of trouble and I continued to keep a look out here for something suitable.

While looking at door knockers in Suffolk, I was distracted by other globe lights.

And then, oh dear, in February before boarding a flight up to Johannesburg to check on the building progress, I bought the latest copy of one of my favourite British magazines again. And the plane wasn’t even in the air yet before I had finally found a chandelier that seemed just perfect…

This, I could live with.

Produced by a Porta Romana in Britain, this design seemed just right.  The bronze colouring would pick up on the wooden flooring and the beautiful leaf design would echo the view of the trees in the park.  I thought I was sorted.  I’d barely checked into the guest house when I googled Porta Romana and found the chandelier on their site.  Part of a new range called ‘Enchanted Forest’, the photos were accompanied by the text below:

This description reinforced my feeling that the design would work well over our stairwell but when I saw in the small print below that the chandelier had been featured in a Sotheby’s exhibition, I began to have some doubts.  Further trawling through the internet revealed the price and if I’d thought the original Jamb fitting was out of my range, this one was out of my galaxy. Perhaps I need to stop looking at foreign décor magazines. With our exchange rate what it is, what used to seem expensive now seems positively outrageous.

I decided to stick with simple downlighters until something suitable happened along.

A few friends had suggested that I look at La Basse-cour  in the 44 Stanley Avenue development in Milpark and finally, last Friday I did just that.  And there I found it, the perfect light fitting, I hope, right on my doorstep at a perfectly reasonable South African price.  Again, it is not quite the same as the Jamb example but it’s close enough to create the same atmosphere, I think.

I’ve chosen the biggest of the three.

Another perspective.

I’m looking forward to seeing it in place eventually but that’ll be another story.