POUR
The foundation of each lamp comes from the pour. The liquid slip is mixed thoroughly to the ideal consistency and poured at pace, right to the top of the mould without stopping to prevent air bubbles and ensure even wall coverage. Some complex shapes require a quick swirl to ensure good contact at the mould opening.
DRY
This is where the plaster mould goes to work, rapidly drawing moisture out of the mixture. Timing is crucial and can result in huge differences in wall thickness, strength and eventual translucency. After the desired time has elapsed the wet slip is emptied for reuse. The remaining thin-walled piece is left inside the mould to dry further.
TRIM
Any excess solidified slip is trimmed with a blunt blade both before and after removal from the mould along with some surface sponging at this stage. Then this very fragile greenware is stored for more than a week to fully air-dry before being meticulously filed and sanded in preparation for firing.
FIRE
The stage that gives bone china its incredible strength is kiln-firing. The greenware is evenly placed on the kiln shelves before being sealed in and fired to over 1000C. The firing takes place in stages over 12 hours where all remaining water is expelled and the natural components of the ceramic become vitreous at the peak temperature.
FINISH
Once cooled, each ceramic element is washed before the lamps are individually wired through a slip cast ceramic stopper and finished with an engraved brass collar. They are then each packaged with a ceramic base or metal ceiling rose and an energy efficient bulb in a fully biodegradable, screen printed box, ready for delivery.
Pour was founded out of a genuine passion for ambient and atmospheric lighting, with a preference for bathing space with splashes of focussed warmth rather than drowning a room in one solid, cold hue from above.
Initially setup as a commission only business in 2016, it’s founder Fiachra Kinch began crafting one-of-a-kind lamps from intriguing glass containers, bottles and jars which were combined with solid oak, poured concrete and copper strip detailing. Alongside these commissions and retail design projects he began designing and prototyping a new range of handmade fine bone china lamps, now known as the Imperial Collection, from his back garden studio in London where they continue to be handmade to order.
The process of slip casting is considered to be thousands of years old, but the composition for bone china slip was only discovered in the late 18th Century in London and remained an almost exclusively English product until the late 20th Century, spanning the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras. Hence it was the ideal translucent, high-strength material to use in contemporary lamps inspired by those much revered periods in history.
