Spanish Moorish Hand-Painted Ceramic Table Lamp

This is a Spanish ceramic table lamp hand-painted by the Cerámica Al Yarrar workshop in Granada, decorated in the Moorish Nasrid style with a new custom saffron-yellow raw silk shade. The cylindrical albarello-form base is covered edge to edge in interlacing arabesque — deep teal, cobalt blue, and saffron yellow over a crackled white glaze — the same kind of pattern that once ran across the walls of the Alhambra. The shade is trimmed with Houlès passementerie, and the lamp is finished with brass fittings and a fabric-wrapped yellow cord. It's hardwired for U.S. use, international plugs can be fitted at no charge, and the height given includes the shade.

The base comes from Al Yarrar, a family workshop in the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter of Granada that climbs the hillside facing the Alhambra. The workshop specializes in bringing back the ceramics of Al-Andalus, using the traditional double-fired majolica method to recreate Andalusian, Nasrid, and Caliphal patterns that date back to pieces made between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Their green, blue, and manganese pottery carries on a craft Granada has been known for over centuries, and the workshop is counted among the city's respected traditional ceramicists. The lamp itself is a one-of-a-kind piece, built from the vase without cutting or drilling the ceramic.