About

Turqelis

We make table lamps out of porcelain figures and hand-painted ceramic — the kind of object that used to sit on a hall table and is now oddly hard to buy new.

A painter's hands applying a fine blue band to the base of a white porcelain figurine on a studio workbench
The blue line around a base is painted freehand, one figure at a time. It is the last mark made before firing.

Why figures

Most lamps are a shape holding a bulb. A figurine lamp is a small scene that happens to light a room — two people at chess, a pair reading, a woman on a garden swing — and it behaves differently in a room because of it. You notice it when the light is off.

The tradition is eighteenth-century European: the porcelain rooms of houses that could afford them. We are not copying any of it. Our figures are drawn and modelled for us, made to our own designs, and none of them reproduces a specific historic piece or another maker's model. They are new objects that know where they came from.

Alongside them we make plainer ceramic bases — cobalt on white, and one with no pattern at all — for rooms and buyers where a figure would be one thing too many.

Made by hand, and it shows

Each figure is cast in parts, and the fine elements — flowers, instruments, pierced lace, fingers — are modelled separately and applied by hand before the piece goes into the kiln. That is why a group has real depth from the side rather than reading as a single lump of porcelain, and why a snapped petal cannot be repaired invisibly.

Gilding is painted on after glazing, a thin line at a time. The blue on the ceramic bases is painted under the glaze, which is why it survives handling that would take gilding straight off.

All of this means variation. Depth of blue, the run of a gold edge, the number and placement of applied flowers — these differ between two lamps of the same model. We would rather tell you that here than have you email us about it.

Close detail of hand-applied porcelain lace frills with gold edging and a painted blue floral spray
Porcelain lace and hand-run gilding at close range — the level of finish the range is built to.

How we work

We design, a workshop makes

Turqelis is a small team in Hong Kong. We draw the figures, choose the palettes and set the finish; a ceramics workshop we have worked with for years does the casting, painting and firing.

A short range, held

Twelve models, not two hundred. We would rather keep a model in stock for years than run a new collection every season and discontinue the one you wanted a second of.

No invented history

We started recently and sell a modest number of lamps. You will not find a founding date in the 1800s, awards nobody gave us, or review counts on this site, because we do not have them.

A lit blue-and-white ceramic table lamp on a dark walnut console in a dim room
A 60 W-equivalent warm LED, a plain linen shade, a dark wall. Most of what these lamps do is make a small pool of light.

What a lamp is for

These are table lamps, roughly 40 to 60 cm tall including the shade. They are for a hall table, a console, a bedside, the end of a sideboard — a second or third light in a room rather than the one you read by.

If you want a single bright source over a desk, buy a task lamp instead; ours will disappoint you. If you want something that gives a room a warm corner and stands up to being looked at closely, that is what we make.

Everything about materials, bulbs and cleaning is on Care & Materials, and the questions we get most are answered on the FAQ.

Who we are, formally. Turqelis is a trading name of CRONUS COMMODITIES LIMITED, a company registered in Hong Kong. Questions of any kind go to info@turqelis.com and are answered by a person, usually within one business day.