Shine A Light: A Conversation With Simon Terry

5 min read

Instantly recognisable thanks to their timelessly contemporary form, fluid movement and distinctive charm, Anglepoise lamps have been bringing light to our homes for 90 years.

With their timeless form, fluid movement and distinctive charm, it’s hard to believe that Anglepoise lamps have been bringing light to our homes for 90 years.

The British lighting brand was established in 1934 when car engineer George Carwardine invented a new type of lamp using “constant tension”, and partnered with Terry & Sons to manufacture it. The result was a hit – a humble kinetic marvel, and an instant icon. Beloved by designers and engineers, the brand has worked with the likes of Margaret Howell and Paul Smith, and been featured on a Royal Mail stamp alongside Concorde and the K2 red telephone box as legends of British design.

We spoke to Simon Terry, now the fifth generation of his family to run the business, about his philosophies of useful design – responsibility to raw materials, a focus on repairing and rewiring, and the moral obligation on designers and manufacturers to create things that last.

It's 90 years this year since the first Anglepoise 1227 was switched on. Are you doing anything for the anniversary?

We’re launching a special product with a different treatment on the existing one, and hopefully a student materials project too. I have an obsession with interesting non-plastic materials, everything from seaweed to crab shells. It's all about looking forward – what do the next 90 years look like for us? Because our products will be around for a long time. We mend and repair Anglepoise that are up to 90 years old.

“Smaller companies that will survive are the ones that care about their products and their materials forever.”

You've got a whole section on your site for spare parts, and a repair service. Is that important to you?

Every time something's thrown away, I get upset. How you make and maintain things has always been at the heart of what we do. It's just common sense. If you make something easy to assemble, it's easy to disassemble and to maintain because things change with time. The natural patina of time causes paint to degrade, cables to change flex, joints to get greasy. So you have to have full-time adjustability.

So it's why we use nuts and bolts, not rivets, for example. It's the appropriate use of technology. And it means there's no reason why products should stop lasting. So, the cables will wear out and electrical standards change, but the arms sets and the mechanics should never change. Spring steel will endure for years.

We've repaired about 400 lamps now, sent in to us by customers. We really don't make any money on it – we do it because we feel it's important, and it connects us back to our community. Smaller companies that will survive are the ones that care about their products and their materials forever. And it's also the true value of the product. That’s why we offer a true lifetime guarantee – we're still the only lighting or electrical company to do it.

"How you make and maintain things has always been at the heart of what we do. It's just common sense."

The fact that you offer a lifetime guarantee shows that you mean what you say.

You know, this is my blood. It’s my family's heritage. I'm the fifth generation in my family doing this, since my great-great-grandfather Herbert in 1855. It's a moral obligation to me. I am a custodian of this business – that’s my title. My role in life is to leave it in a better place than I found it. In terms of product design, the question is, Do we really need another light? Do we really need another chair or table? Let's be honest. Or do we just need things that are designed properly, that work ergonomically, with better materials and better systems managing those materials?

"It's a moral obligation to me. I am a custodian of this business – that’s my title. My role in life is to leave it in a better place than I found it."

The British industrial designer Sir Kenneth Grange said: “Anglepoise is a minor miracle of balance, a quality in life that we do not value as it should.” Design-wise, balance is a key value of an Anglepoise – and it seems philosophically, too?

23 years ago when I started at the company, I was looking through the archive. And I found this small cutting written in the 80s by Sir Kenneth Grange. When I read that quote, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I tracked him down at an event and we chatted for two hours. And from that moment we started working together. All because of that quote. It’s a universal thing about the way we live, and obviously it's echoed beautifully in the product as well. Kenneth and I became close friends, I worked with him right up until he passed away last year – he kept designing until the day he died, at age 95. That quote drove me forwards because the key to the Anglepoise is in the balance. It's effortless to move and it puts the light source exactly where it's needed – it’s key to the source, direction and control of light.

You've worked with many design legends. Why do you think it’s such an appealing product to designers?

In its purest form, the Anglepoise is like a Formula One car stripped bare. Engineers love it because most engineering is hidden, but this is laid bare, and there's no part that’s superfluous to its function. So it's very honest, and its movement is very human. But also, it’s gained an iconic status as a product. Iconic status is earned through society, through years of repetition. It’s a gift, given by the people. You have to be very careful how you treat it.

“Engineers love it because most engineering is hidden, but this is laid bare, and there's no part that’s superfluous to its function.”

I heard a story about an Anglepoise that worked after being submerged in an aircraft for four decades. Is it apocryphal?

It’s true. The Americans were surveying Loch Ness, trying to find the Loch Ness monster a number of years ago – they discovered R for Robert, a WWII Wellington bomber, still intact and pulled it out. It had an Anglepoise lamp inside – they changed the bulb, and it still worked. You can see it in the Brooklands Museum. There’s another war-related story that’s just unbelievable. During the Second World War, a Jewish family in Poland was escaping the Nazis. They took their Anglepoise, dismantled it, and fit it into their case to bring it to the UK then reassembled it. So this lamp was a treasured possession, used in the family and passed down. Many decades later that person's daughter was buying a new Anglepoise lamp for her own daughter, the grandchild, when she shared that story with us. I cried when I heard it.

And objects are important. They tell stories.

That’s the thing about mending too. when we get things into repair, we don't respray them or take out the dents, because we say that's part of the natural patina and the storytelling of that product. A product should have stories. You’re celebrating the mend rather than trying to hide it. And of course, respecting materials is the responsibility of brands and designers. We've got a huge responsibility for a lump of material, like a piece of metal that's come out of the ground that's had tonnes of earth removed to create it. You need to do right by it. Waste doesn't exist in nature. Every ecosystem has a whole cycle where everything is reused and repurposed by something.

“We've got a huge responsibility for a lump of material, like a piece of metal that's come out of the ground, that's had tonnes of earth removed to create it. You need to do right by it."

What’s your favourite Anglepoise design?

The first product I worked on closely with Kenneth was the Type 3. We don't make it anymore, but it led to the Type 75, which is our biggest seller. During that process we came to understand the detail, the joints, the connectors, the spring tensioning. It was a wonderful experience. That is the product closest to my heart. I will always love it.

www.anglepoise.com