Come illuminare una testa di moro in casa

Lighting a Testa di Moro: Angle, Temperature, Beam

A testa di moro is a ceramic head with a face in relief, and lighting one is a different problem from lighting a vase or a plate. Here the surface is made of projections and hollows, and the light that hits it decides whether those features can be read at all. The same lamp, moved half a metre, gives you two different objects.

Three things govern the result: where the beam comes from, what temperature it has, how concentrated it is.

Direction: the beam arrives from the side, not from the front

A frontal light, placed behind the viewer and aimed straight at the piece, removes the shadows. Without shadows a relief cannot be read: the cheekbones, the arch of the brows, the crown and the features become a flat drawing on the surface.

What you want is raking light, which grazes the surface instead of hitting it square on. Arriving from the side, or from above at an angle, it produces a lit zone and a shaded one on the face, and that border is what gives back the volume.

A useful reference comes from exhibition practice: in museums the sources are often placed at around thirty degrees from the vertical, an angle that avoids both flattening and dazzling the viewer. At home take it as a starting point rather than a measurement to respect to the centimetre.

One limit worth knowing: if the beam comes from too high up, deep shadows form under the brow ridges and under the nose, and they harden the expression. If your piece looks severe under the lamp, that is nearly always why.

Temperature: below 2700 K the pale finishes shift

Colour temperature, the figure in kelvin on the bulb box, changes the perceived colour of the ceramic.

  • Below 2700 K the light is very warm. Pale finishes, and mother of pearl in particular, take on a yellow cast they do not have. The piece looks aged by itself.
  • Between 2700 and 3000 K you are in the right domestic band. Mother of pearl stays pale, the blues do not go dull, the room stays welcoming.
  • Above 4000 K the light turns cold and clinical. The warm tones of the decoration lose their strength and the ceramic takes on the look of a shop window.

There is a second figure that matters and almost nobody looks at: the colour rendering index, given as CRI or Ra. On a hand painted piece, with several colours set side by side, a source with a CRI below 80 flattens the differences between neighbouring tones. For decorated pieces it is worth looking for at least 90.

View all

Concentration: gold and lustre want diffuse light

Finishes with gold and lustre have a metallic surface obtained with the third firing, so they reflect like a mirror. Under a narrow spot they give back one blinding point of light and the rest of the piece stays dark.

On those finishes a broad, soft source is better: a lamp with a shade, indirect light bounced off the ceiling, a long strip instead of a point. The reflection spreads across the surface instead of concentrating, and the gilding reads over its whole extent.

Matt finishes take narrower beams without trouble, and in fact gain definition from them.

The answer that skips the problem: the lamp

There is a family of pieces in the catalogue where the light does not come from outside: the ceramic head is the base of a lamp, and the source sits under a fabric shade. The formats run from 55 cm in total height, roughly 22 inches, with a 25 cm ceramic part and a 35 cm shade, up to 70 cm, roughly 28 inches, with a 40 cm ceramic part and a 45 cm shade.

The fabric shade solves two of the three questions above on its own: it diffuses the light instead of concentrating it, so no blinding reflections, and it sends it downwards along the piece, so it grazes. All that is left is choosing the right bulb for temperature and rendering.

There are nine of them, all in the lumi ornamentali collection, and they exist in the same finishes as the standing heads.

Natural light

By day the window does the work, and it changes hour by hour. A position that reads well in the morning can be against the light in the afternoon.

Two pointers. First: the piece goes to one side of the opening, not in front of it, for the same reasons of direction seen above. Second: continuous direct sun is to be avoided, and that is about looking after the piece rather than about how it reads.

View all

The questions we get

Is the room light enough?

To see the piece, yes. To make it perform, no. A central ceiling fitting lights everything from above and evenly, which is exactly the condition in which a relief flattens. One extra source, even a small one, placed to the side, is enough.

Does LED damage the ceramic?

LED sources do not emit ultraviolet in any significant quantity and they run cool, so they are the safest choice for an object kept near light for hours.

How many watts do I need?

Watts tell you the consumption, not the light. The figure to read is lumens. Lighting a single piece on a surface does not call for high values: where you put the source matters far more than how powerful it is.

Fixed light or adjustable?

Adjustable, if you can. A steerable spot lets you correct the angle after seeing the result, and that is the difference between a light that works and one you put up with.

What if the piece is inside a closed bookcase?

You need a source inside the compartment, mounted on the top front edge and aimed towards the back. Lit from outside, the shelf above casts a shadow and the piece stays dark.

Before buying the bulb

Run the simplest test there is: take the torch on your phone and move it around the piece, from the side, from above, at an angle. In thirty seconds you know which way the light has to come from, and only then do you choose the fitting.

If you would rather not solve anything and have the problem solved already, the short route is the lamps: the light and the piece are the same object.

Discover our collections
Decoro Sicily

Decoro Sicily

Flowers Line

Flowers Line

Sicilian Lemons Line

Sicilian Lemons Line