How high to hang a pendant over a dining table
The 75 cm rule, table size, ceiling height and how many pendants to use: measurements that make a dining light work.
Inside the gilding room
How Hasmukhbhai lays gold leaf on a steel disc, one square at a time.
Each gold-leaf floor lamp begins as a flat steel disc, spun into a shallow bowl in our Naroda workshop. Then it goes to the smallest room in the shed, where Hasmukhbhai has gilded picture frames and temple fittings for 30 years.
He sands the inside of the bowl, primes it with a red clay ground called bole, and brushes on a thin size, a slow-drying glue. When the size is tacky, he lifts squares of gold leaf from their paper book with a flat brush, charged by passing it over his cheek, and lays them down one by one. There are about 60 squares in each disc.
The leaf is thinner than a sheet of paper by hundreds of times. A breath can tear it, so the fan is off and the door stays shut. Small gaps are patched, then the whole surface is burnished with a soft cloth.
A disc takes two days including drying. Each one is a little different, with faint seams where the squares overlap. That is why the lamp glows warmer and softer than paint ever could.
