Meet the woman who designed lamps for TV shows like Killing Eve
When Alice Moylan happened upon a slightly battered Victorian lamp in a local salvage yard, it was a lightbulb moment.
The previous year, she had left her job in corporate events to start a furniture upcycling business, Beauvamp, but the arrival of her son meant that painting cabinets in a cold, draughty shed was no longer practical.
Alice, who lives in Derbyshire, had been drawn to the standard lamp's wooden, barley twist stand, which she planned to sand down, but then she noticed the shade. "The fabric was torn, but I loved its original Victorian shape, with its scalloped edge and fringing," she says. "It gave me the idea to re-cover vintage lampshades – something I could do at the kitchen table."
Unlike mass-produced modern lampshades, which are often held together by glue, Victorian makers stretched and stitched fabrics over wire frames by hand, before adorning them with intricate braids and silky fringes.
Alice's vintage find inspired her to research and revive these lost techniques. This was back in 2008, says Alice, when there was less information online and fewer YouTube videos."I found some old books in the library and discovered the 'streetly stitch', a locking stitch traditionally used to attach fabric to a frame," she explains. "It involved a lot of trial and error, carefully taking apart old shades and experimenting with ways to put them back together."
At first, Alice scoured local charity shops for old lampshades, re-covering the frames with mismatched vintage fabrics. Although she loved the bespoke nature of each shade, it was impossible to replicate a design. As requests for her work grew, Alice realised she would need to establish a more consistent process: "I sketched out some designs for frames, inspired by the glass Tiffany lamps of the 1920s and was very lucky to find one of the few frame-makers left in the UK who agreed to make a small batch for me."
The Tiffany frame is still a bestselling shape for Beauvamp. The edges of each frame are wrapped in cotton tape, or "webbed", ready for the fabric to be stitched on by hand with a needle and thread.
As light needs to filter softly through the shade, Alice uses natural linens and sustainable silks to cover the frames. While they may not be heavy fabrics, they still require some effort to sew onto the webbing, so a traditional thimble is an essential tool for avoiding sore thumbs.
The trickiest part of the process, says Alice, is forming the pleats that have become a signature style for Beauvamp shades: "It's too fiddly to measure each pleat, so it takes a lot of practice to get a feel for the amount of fabric you need to take with each gather. On top of that, you must keep checking that your pleats are even on top and underneath, so that it looks good from above and if you're sitting beneath it, too."
Despite the neatness of the sewing, the stitching is concealed under finishing flourishes: locally made braids, dip-dyed fringes or, most recently, hand-sewn ruffles. Like all of Alice's designs, the ruffle range takes inspiration from heritage styles – not just interiors, but fashion, too. The flapper dresses of the Roaring Twenties are evident in flamboyant fringing, while delicate pleats nod to Regency styles and decorative frills echo Victorian aesthetics.
"Chatsworth House is just down the road and Burghley House isn't far away," says Alice. "Every time I visit, I come away with a new idea sparked by the fringing on an ornate armchair or the way a braid has been arranged in a scalloped shape on a sofa. Even the colours provide inspiration; we have a silk shade based on the Chatsworth blue."
Yet Alice doesn't want to create replicas: "I want to draw from the past and put a twist on it to create a design for today’s interiors."
Having outgrown the kitchen table, six years ago Alice set up a studio in the nearby market town of Wirksworth. It is, she says, a particularly artistic community.
"We have potters, glass blowers, woodturners, blacksmiths – pretty much every creative realm is covered within a few miles." She works with these local craftspeople to commission lampstand designs that will complement her shades: "I like to marry styles in a way that's unexpected. I might pair a more traditional shade, like our Tiffany Shortie – pleated with a fringe – with the clean edges of a contemporary wooden lampstand."
The expanding business has also seen Beauvamp's employees grow to six, including Alice's mum who is responsible for the pincushions every team member wears on their wrist.
"She's brilliant at sewing – she taught me – so we have her on the tricky ruffles," Alice says. Between them, they produce around 40 shades a month for private homes, hotels and restaurants, even film sets. "I had a lot of fun designing lamps for the series Killing Eve, where I had the task of lighting Villanelle's Parisian apartment," laughs Alice.
Quite a few of her designs also make their way into her own house, a Georgian cottage "dark enough to need lots of light".
As autumn nights draw in, she likes to return from family walks in Hope Valley or, when they're feeling particularly energetic, up Kinder Scout, to the comfort of a lamp-lit room. With four or five in every room – seven in the hall – there are plenty to choose from, but Alice has a favourite.
The original salvage-yard find may have been sold at the start of her business venture, but she has since found a replacement: "It's a walnut, barley twist lamp with carved detailing at the top and base. I have it by my chair in the lounge with one of our pleated Volga linen fringed shades. It creates a wonderful ambience. I won’t be parted with this one."
For more information, visit beauvamp.com.
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