Victorian values

Electric lighting was Victorian bling. Today it has to be subtler, hidden and more versatile while still making a show. At Leighton House Museum in London, Sutton Vane Associates’ scheme recreates the lighting conditions there in 1896 but also reveals unseen architectural detail and can be used for modern events. 

Recreating the electric lighting exactly as it was in 1896 when its original owner the artist Lord Frederic Leighton died, was a key element in the recent restoration of Leighton House Museum in Holland Park, London. The palazzo-style house was designed by George Aitchison with a double height studio and later extended to include its most famous feature, an enfilade of three halls lined with a vast collection of 16th and 17th-century Turkish and Middle Eastern tiles and culminating in the splendid, domed Arab Hall built in 1877. 

Sutton Vane Associates’ research, including Victorian photography and descriptions from the period, revealed some surprising details of the design of original fittings as well as the lighting levels and colour temperatures that Leighton would have had at a time when electric lighting in the home was still an ostentatious novelty. The lighting scheme had not only accurately to replicate Victorian lighting conditions but also to work to 21st-century environmental standards; to allow features of the stunning architecture to be revealed (often for the first time), and to enable the museum to stage effectively-lit, revenue-earning events such as small concerts. 

Perhaps the best example of how this was achieved is the restoration of the huge pendant fitting known as the gasolier (originally a gas chandelier, adapted for electric light) that hangs in the Arab Hall and illuminates its gold dome. While the gasolier was taken down to be cleaned and rewired for safety, the research showed that the bird statues adorning it had been altered to clasp bulbs in their beaks so that the whole structure was lit. “Suddenly the whole design of the fitting made sense,” says consultancy principal Mark Sutton Vane. “Far from hiding the lamps, Leighton wanted to show off this wonderful new technology whose use was still pretty adventurous when he electrified the house in 1895.” 

“Far from hiding the lamps, Leighton wanted to show off this wonderful new technology”

New lamp holders were prototyped and installed with tungsten halogen lamps that look like old bulbs and can be dimmed down to produce the same warm yellowish light that Leighton would have enjoyed using incandescent lamps with carbon filaments. The new lamps not only use less energy but also last a great deal longer. 

In addition, warm colour temperature LEDs have been secreted in part of the fitting to help illuminate the Arab Hall’s spectacular dome and these are complemented by other, completely hidden spots which even out the vertical shadow from the gasolier’s main column. Thus Leighton and Aitchison’s design intent has been restored but the gasolier can also be used to highlight architectural elements that were previously invisible, as and when required. 

Lighting controls allow scene setting for evening events or to pick out features of the building such as the gold quarter domes at the corners of the studio, while elsewhere the historic accuracy of the lighting even extends to leaving a simple bare lamp hanging in utilitarian splendour in Lord Leighton’s dressing room. 

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