All stone, no wood, no metal shade. The Thorne is a single turned travertine tube with the lens set deep inside the bottom, which cuts the glare and pushes the light straight down in a defined circle.
It does the job of a recessed downlight without any of the damage. Nothing is cut into the ceiling, nothing is pushed up into the void, and the fitting reads as a piece of stone rather than a hole in the plaster. In an older house with a lath and plaster ceiling, or a flat where you cannot get above, that is often the deciding factor.
Where it earns its place
-
Hallways. Three in a run give you rhythm and even light without a single central fitting doing all the work.
-
Over a worktop or a sink. Directed light exactly where you are standing, and no shade to keep clean.
-
Reading corners. Aimed at a chair rather than the middle of the room, which is where the light is actually useful.
-
Ceilings you cannot cut. Lath and plaster, concrete soffits, rented flats, listed buildings.
Real stone, so no two are the same
On a narrow tube the banding runs along the length rather than scattering, so every piece reads as a distinct column of stone. Some come through pale and even, others carry a stronger seam. Yours will not be an exact match for the photographs. The gallery includes a macro at life size.
Fitting it
Nothing gets cut, which is the entire argument for a surface mounted downlight and the reason it works in lath and plaster, under a concrete soffit, or in a flat where you cannot get above the ceiling. The one thing to be aware of is that 16 cm of solid stone hangs off a 6.5 cm footprint, so the load lands in a small area and the fixing needs to be genuinely sound rather than adequate. Warm white LED bulb supplied, no dimmer.
