Carl-Christoph Held

As a family whose surname translates into "hero", we regarded our life as a "heroic journey".

It was the great mythologist Joseph Campbell who showed that the great heroic sagas in world culture repeat a dramatic narrative that can be described as a journey through darkness into light. So light is also very important for us. When it gets dark, we switch on our Tolomeo lamps which show us where we are and let us know if we wander from the patch. Our photograph shows the Tolomeo Mega Terra in in our "heroes' dwelling" in front of the painting 'o.T.' from the Zobelchrom series by artist Helga Schmidhuber.
We bought our first Tolomeo lamp around 20 years ago – for our bathroom. The design of the room was rather matter-of- fact and we wanted to upgrade it with some designer elements. We feel that we succeeded in doing so with these timeless lamps, and today you'll find the Tolomeo everywhere in our house: in the office on the desk, in the living room and the bedroom and even as a clip-on light on our children's beds. I value not only the sophisticated technology and the unique appearance of
the design, but also the variety of models with different surface colours and the possibility of using them outdoors too now. My special Tolomeo experience was meeting Michele De Lucchi and his son a few years ago in the Wiesbaden Museum. The encounter left a clear impression and also opened the way for me to access his other works, which I find very inspiring. Today, Tolomeo is not just a design icon whose light I enjoy when reading. Tolomeo is an attitude to life.