In conversation with: Emer Gillespie

Founder of Brighton based Spark & Bell, Emer Gillespie talks about building her lighting business and shares her thoughts on sustainable design and working with local craftspeople

How did your lighting brand Spark & Bell come about? It all began in 2015 when I made a light for my daughter’s bedroom. I worked with fibre optics for my degree show in fine art textiles, so my love for lighting was reignited. I was teaching at the time and knew I wanted to get back to something more creative and hands-on, so this was the perfect outlet. 

Since then, I have spent years learning, gathering, designing and creating a strong collection of different lights that I’m really proud of. I feel incredibly lucky to call Brighton my home and it has been a source of inspiration through the many creative outlets, inspiring events and a talented makers community. I have grown Spark & Bell slowly and organically over the last 10-years, working independently for the first three of those and slowly growing to our current team of 10.

Emer Gillespie of Spark & Bell

Can you describe your style? I’m really inspired by mid-century design, but I also love the more classical. It’s important to put your own stamp on it though, but I generally stick with simple clean lines to create timeless pieces that last.

For interiors, I feel it’s important to ensure it’s not just a fad and that lighting will complement the other interior elements in your home for years to come. I have designed quite a few lights around what I needed for my own home, which is a great starting point.

We have recently completed a major renovation of our home, so this is where some of the more recent designs stemmed from. I am also really focused on using sustainable materials like recycled plastic and cork and using local makers for parts.

You use local craftspeople to work on your pieces. Why is this important to you? I was a practicing artist for years and having started off Spark & Bell as a small maker, I know the difference it can make to have regular orders coming through. For three years I had a workshop in a local makers space called Rodhus where I met lots of craft workers and artists. I just started having those conversations about working together and what parts they could make for me. 

Knowing the impact our business can make is really empowering. That’s why I still go to all the local craft fairs looking around for who can make what. Last summer I found Bex from Throw to Fire, another ceramicist, who makes lovely shades for us now. Katie Preece (above) was another find and Matt Boysons is a wood turner who creates beautiful hand-turned reclaimed and sustainable wood pieces. We’ve also a collection of cast jesmonite and cork pieces with ex-architect and product designer Will Aitkins of Make Relief. 

The creation of these pieces is often a collaborative process; makers may try new techniques and ideas, and we’ll often have conversations on changes and improvements. That’s why I want to keep their name attached to pieces. We’re benefitting each other and it’s important to share that and acknowledge it. Supporting local makers and doing well together supports our mission to build a sustainable business practice and importantly allows us to work with high quality materials with a unique design aesthetic.

Tell me about your drive to be a sustainable brand. We believe that design is highly personal and that lighting should be beautiful, functional and built to last. Sustainability has always been at the core of what we do, both in the way we’ve organically grown the business and in the choices we make in our materials and processes.  

From our workshop’s energy use to packaging and material choices to the very business model we have adopted – sustainability is at the core.  We also only make lights ordered by customers that buy directly from us. This means they get to tailor the perfect lights for their home and that leads to a very low return rate.

Wherever we can, we choose to work with local or UK artists, designers and manufacturers to limit the transportation footprint of our supply chain. Alongside materials such as brass, cork, jesmonite, locally sourced wood and recycled plastic are all carefully chosen for their durability and low impact nature. Furthermore, almost all of our packaging is recyclable or recycled from suppliers. We halved our recycling last year by shredding cardboard to use in packaging and turn our own and other local businesses’ plastic waste into beautiful materials for our lights.

As well as being handmade, every item is fixable and replacement parts are readily available through a lifetime repair service. Each piece also comes with a 10-year warranty, something quite rare in the lighting industry. Our customers are investing in a light that becomes a part of their home or business and lasting quality is important in this dynamic.

I am particularly proud of Spark & Bell’s in-house recycled plastics process to make beautiful materials for our lights. Everything that goes into our recycled plastic comes from sources headed for landfill. It all started from frustration with the amount of plastic coming in from our suppliers. There had to be a better use for it, so we started experimenting to see if we could turn it into a material we could use in our lighting. 

For our Jewel material (shown above on the Arc light) the white and clear base comes from old CD cases. A friend of ours runs Sister Ray Records in Soho and was sending hundreds of CD cases to landfill every week. We’re excited to launch a new stunning chandelier made from this waste material in the next couple of months – a design we have been working on for over a year.

Do you offer a bespoke service to interior designers? Absolutely! At Spark & Bell we pride ourselves on making all lights to order in our workshop. Because of this, our workshop is stocked with a large selection of parts so we can easily accommodate custom designs, colours and adjustments. We often work directly with designers to build larger bespoke pieces for commercial and residential clients. As many of our parts are made locally, we also liaise with our makers on bespoke pieces allowing for a wide variety of material choices.

What’s your favourite possession? That is a tricky one. When I was a photographer, as I shot everything on film, the folders of negatives were my prize possession. While I love lots of pretty things, like sentimental pieces of jewellery, I don’t hold much attachment to them. Apart from my vintage engagement ring, which I nearly lost in a bin one time!

(Image at top shows House Bar Heaton by And Studios)

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