I don’t think about light so much. We don’t see light; we see reflections on surfaces, on skin. 

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I want you to read something from 1912, by Louis Bell in “The Art of Illumination”: “In electric lighting the most strenuous efforts are constantly being made to improve the efficiency of the incandescent lamp by a few percent… Yet in lighting generally and domestic lighting in particular, a little skill and tact in use of the lights we now have can effect an economy far greater than all the material improvements of the last years…”

For most of history, providing lighting for the home has been a filthy, expensive, dangerous business which cost us dearly in terms of time and labor and even (when fire was involved as it nearly always was) our lives.

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Burns for hours, stays moist, and outdoors the flame is protected from the winds…
And, if you get hungry, you can roast and eat the turnip.

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An interview on the Etsy Blog inspired by my talk at Urban Design Week 2011.

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While lighting design has finally evolved into a legitimate, recognized field of practice, its evolution as a field of study is lagging behind. There is as yet no cannon: no body of principles accepted as axiomatic or universally binding in our field of study. Nor do we have a comprehensive list of texts deemed relevant to our field. There is practice, lots of practice. Some practitioners have taken the time to document and present their work to the benefit of our and neighboring fields. However, we do not, as yet, have the tools for transforming the lessons learned from individuals’ lighting practice into a formal knowledge base. We are still in the early stages of building a conceptual framework and models of discourse that can contribute to the development of a rich and nuanced cannon.

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Tillett Lighting Design in collaboration with Choreographers Jon Kinzel and Jodi Melnick created “Available Light” for Open House New York 2011.

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