Horst Hamann

”My relationship with the Tolomeo? ...

... It's been providing illumination for me for many years! I mean that literally – I've had some really good ideas sitting in its light. For example, I had the idea of building a beach house on the US Atlantic coast, in Maine. I think everyone has a favourite place somewhere in the world – a place you can withdraw to when you need peace and quiet, where you feel secure, where you can recharge your batteries. For me, it's this house, with its 34 large windows and its little reading room looking across the sea. I realised immediately that here, where it gets dark very early in the cooler months of the year, a special lamp would be essential too. I love to read a book in the warm, diffuse light of my Tolomeo wall lamp – and, inspired by this experience, I've installed the same lights in the children's rooms too. It has just occurred to me that I've never counted how many Tolomeos we actually have in use at home – it must come to quite a few in our apartments in New York and Paris. What do I love about the Tolomeo? Its simplicity, its functionality, its lightness, the matt-finish aluminium – and it just adapts to every environment. It's hard to say why it has become such a timeless classic, but that is precisely what makes good products good: The harder they are to describe, the higher their emotional value is – it's very similar with good photography. And I'd almost forgotten: The Tolomeo gives an incredibly good light! It's simply one of those products that can't be improved on.”