Candles

This year I was in Helsinki in June - in late June around the time of the longest day - and I really appreciated being able to wander around the city in the late evening when it was still warm and the sky had that never-actually-dark glow. Of course the price they pay for that comes in the Winter. Very long, very cold and very dark nights.

I know it’s nowhere near as bad in England but then this afternoon it was dark and raining here at 3.30.

One easy way to counter the gloom is by lighting candles and there is a huge range to go for ... from the tall thin candles for the Nordic Lights to the scented candles by Scintilla from Iceland … smellies called things like Westwinds and Silent Sands.

Put on your Killing Jumper, light a few candles, make some gløgg, put on something from E.S.T. - turned down low - and snuggle up with the most recent offering from Jo Nesbo.

Nordic Lights

Design House Stockholm produces a wide range of candlesticks from the Nordic Light, by Jonas Grundell, that opens out with four candles on the smaller candlestick or with seven branches on the larger Nordic Light, or there is the Nordic Shine, by the same designer in the same form but in a glossy lacquer finish and with four candles. Design House Stockholm also produce the beautifully simple Night Light by Pia Törnell … the one to light your way up the stairs to bed when the power goes out.

Night Light by Pia Törnell

lighting from Design House Stockholm

Design House Stockholm describes itself as a publishing house. They employ a wide range of designers and give them an opportunity to rethink and reinterpret more conventional approaches to product design. They also seem to encourage a real sense of humour and this is particularly obvious in the designs for their lighting range. Many of the lamps and lights from Design House Stockholm are used in the cafe at Nord.

Two Cord Lamps.jpg

The Cord Lamp is by a trio of young designers with a studio in Stockholm. Petrus Palmér, Jonas Pettersson and John Löfgren met at Kalmar University in Smäland and forming the studio in 2005, called themselves Form Us With Love. They take that inevitable problem - however hard you try, it is always impossible to hide the flex of a lamp - and they ask - why bother? They do away with the lamp itself and the flex, admittedly with a dimmer switch, becomes the support for an oversized bulb. In 2013 Form Us With Love was named their “designer of the year” by Elle Decoration Sweden.

Harri Koskinen, born in Karstula in Finland in 1970, designed the Block Lamp launched in 1996. It looks like a light bulb trapped within two blocks of ice and has received many design awards. In 2000 the Block Lamp was given a place in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and in 2009 Koskinen was awarded the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize - Scandinavia’s most prominent design award.

The Corner Lamp does what it says. It sits neatly right in the corner. It was designed by Roberto Cárdenas and was awarded the GQ Magazine “Best Home Product” award in December 2006.

The Mañana Lamp, designed by Marie-Louise Gustafsson, is 1.7 Metres high and has a thin grey metal stem. Initially, when I first saw the lamp, there was a sort of double-take as I realised that with just two legs and short feet and leaning back against the wall for support it looks, in a nonchalant sort of way, like a figure from a cartoon.