A lamp, a typewriter, a question.

Here is a lamp. And here is a question we have been turning over in our hands for some time.

The lamp is seventy years old, and it has spent most of its life on someone else’s desk, doing the quiet work that good lamps do. It was passed from a father to a son, and it carries the scratches and marks of something that’s been loved for a long time. It is identical to the model once owned by Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, but that is not really what makes it special.

What makes it special is that it is Lauz’s 500th rewire.

And that it is looking for a new home, though not in the way you might expect. Not as a possession. As a responsibility.

We have been thinking about how to do this for a while now. How do you pass on something that has already been passed on once, in a way that honours where it has come from and respects where it might go next? In the end, the answer came down to a single question.

Why should you be entrusted with its next chapter?

During 3 Days of Design, in Copenhagen, we placed the lamp on a desk beneath its own pool of light. Beside it sat an old Olivetti Lettera 35 typewriter, a stack of A4 paper and a pot of document clips. Behind it, a growing gallery of responses hung from wires stretched across the wall, drying in the air like washing on a line.

Over three days, visitors sat down beneath the light and answered our question. Some took a few moments. Others stayed much longer. Each response was typed on the Olivetti and added to the installation, gradually creating a collective portrait of the people who believe objects deserve a longer life.

The result was something we hadn’t quite anticipated. Thoughtful, moving, funny and deeply personal answers filled the wall. Stories of objects repaired and treasured. Memories attached to lamps, desks, books and homes. Reflections on stewardship, responsibility and care.

We are not selling the lamp or auctioning it. We are looking for its next custodian, and that is a different thing altogether.

Because you can’t really own anything. You can only borrow things for a moment in time. The job is to look after them while they are with you, and to pass them on in better shape than you found them. That is what a father did with this lamp and we hope that the next person will do too, when their own time with it is done.

There is no right answer here, we are looking for something that is emotionally charged and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand out.

It might be a sentence about something you have already mended. Or about the kind of light you read by in the evenings. We are interested in the people who think about objects this way.

No product should be designed or destined for landfill and this lamp wasn’t. Seventy years in, with Lauz’s hands on it, it still has plenty of life left, and the question now is who gets to share the next chapter.

So, here it is again, in case you missed it.

Why should you be entrusted with its next chapter?

Love, Simon (and Lauz, whose hands made this possible)

This competition is now closed, and our 500th rewire has found its next custodian. Thank you to everyone who shared why they should be part of the lamp’s next chapter.