DESIGN AND ITS ARCHETYPES

To switch on an Anglepoise and to move it into position is, both literally and metaphorically, to suggest that you have started work. It is like opening the shutters of a shop, or raising a curtain in a theatre. All the senses are involved, sound as well as touch. The click of the switch is like putting up a ‘Do not disturb’ sign.

Beyond that, even though most of the manufacturing processes that it depends on now take place in China, the lamp retains a certain essentially Anglo-Saxon Flavor. Wallace and Gromit are recognizably the product of the same frame of mind.

All of which makes a complex, and multilayered range of meanings for a relatively simple object to carry. But the Anglepoise is the product of all of them, as its form manages to suggest.

- Deyan Sudjic