This project began with a simple question: how do you introduce a contemporary lighting sculpture into a room displaying the paintings whose visual language still shapes the way we understand light, shadow, and composition. The answer became an installation that treats light as material — precise, controlled, and deeply considered.
The project began with a private commission. William Brand was invited to the residence of an art-collecting family to create a pièce de résistance for the room in which their Dutch Old Master paintings are housed. The brief was clear and demanding: develop a lighting sculpture with a distinct presence, yet one that could sit naturally alongside works shaped by centuries of craft.
The resulting piece is a study in material precision. Crafted from mouth-blown glass in the Brand van Egmond atelier, the installation is composed as a constellation rather than a single dominant silhouette. Hand-formed glass stems extend and subdivide, carrying flower elements that hold light close to the material. This brings a particular kind of quiet intensity: pinpoints of illumination nested within the glasswork, allowing the sculpture to register as texture and shimmer — a contemporary counterpart to the layered surfaces and tonal depth of the paintings around it.
The commission later became part of Brand van Egmond’s presence at TEFAF Maastricht, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading fairs for fine art, antiques, and design. In that context, the installation clarified what defines the atelier: lighting shaped by hand, developed through dialogue, and executed with the freedom to respond to a highly specific setting — whether a private collection, a cultural environment, or an interior where every detail carries meaning.
This is the essence of our custom work: translating a client’s world — their architecture, their collections, their narrative — into light that belongs.
