Montavelle Table Lamp

The Montavelle Table Lamp is a boudoir lamp from a French dressing table, the kind that sat beside a hand mirror and a ribboned hat box. The shade is cream fabric embossed all over with climbing roses, the pattern raised in the cloth rather than printed, so it reads like the quilted lid of a keepsake box. Below it a slim brass rod rises from a shallow dome of walnut, and halfway up the rod a cast brass bow is tied round it, its two ribbon tails hanging loose, exactly as a ribbon is knotted around a gift. A small walnut collar closes the stem under the shade. Lit, the roses show as soft raised shadows across the glow.