Tetra Collection: Brass Wall Sconces That Splash a Myriad of Colours

Header: Courtesy of Diaphan Studio

Tetra is a collection of handmade solid brass wall lights that throw a spread of different colours onto the wall around them, all of it coming from a single warm LED hidden inside. The pieces are made by Diaphan Studio, a Milan practice created in 2019 by Alessandro Giacomelli and Dominique Wolniewicz. It is the most recent winner of the “Wall Sconces” category at the LIT Lighting Design Awards.

The inspiration

Giacomelli is a gemologist certified by the Gemological Institute of America, and Wolniewicz is a lighting designer, so the studio has spent years looking at how light behaves inside stones and metals.

Tetra takes its shape from the tetragonal crystal system, one of the seven ways in which atoms can arrange themselves inside a crystal. The atoms sit in a grid at right angles to each other, and two of the three sides are the same length while the third is longer or shorter. Put simply, the shape is a box with a square base, taller or shorter than it is wide. The studio cut the brass profiles to those same proportions, so every piece in the collection is a long, narrow bar with a square section.

“For Diaphan, the true design is the pattern of light a piece creates – the object itself is its instrument.”

Taken from Diaphan Studio

One LED for many colours

Each light contains a single LED light at 2700K, the warm tone of an old filament bulb. The colours are born from what happens to the beam after it leaves the source, since the brass profiles are proportioned so that the light bounces repeatedly inside the body of the lamp before it escapes.

Every bounce changes the beam slightly, and by the time it reaches the wall, it has separated into rays of different intensities and tonalities. The brass on the outside is brushed, while the inner side was left raw, just like how it came out of the industrial extrusion, as raw brass reflects far more light than a treated surface.

“When light reflects onto the raw surfaces, it acquires a materiality that sets the effects apart from digital projections.”

Diaphan Studio

The collection’s four lights

The collection contains four wall lights: the Twin, the Horizon, the Ray and the Compass. The Twin is 43 cm tall and 5 by 5 in section, built from three interlocking brass profiles, and it was fitted with two 20 mm LEDs giving 600 lumens with a colour rendering index above 90. The Horizon is a single blade of brushed brass, 59 cm long, which can be hung horizontally or vertically.

The Ray is the smallest at 32 cm, and it is the only one that can be adjusted by hand at home. Its body can be repositioned on the wall, which changes both how bright the light appears and the pattern it casts, so the dimming is done by moving the metal itself – no dials to turn. The Compass is the tallest of the four at 75 cm and just 5 cm wide, with two LEDs giving 500 lumens, having been custom-made for Delvis (Un)Limited, a collectable design gallery in Milan. All four come in five finishes, from brushed brass through to antique brass and three bronze tones, and each takes between nine and eleven weeks to make.

Prepared for a long life

The brass comes from the offcuts left over by the construction industry, with the studio working every piece entirely by hand so that very little of it goes to waste. The lamps’ parts can be taken apart and repaired when something fails, and the LEDs were chosen for their long life and their low consumption.

Project information

Lighting Design Company: Diaphan Studio
Lead Designers: Alessandro Giacomelli, Dominique Wolniewicz
Location: Milan, Italy