I was coasting down the river on my stand-up paddleboard the other day, as I’m wont to do. It was a rare moment of tranquility in the life of someone running a business (always grateful, never grumbling. Okay, sometimes grumbling). 

I sailed past a lady sitting on a grassy bank in the evening sunshine. I called out, “you’ve got a lovely spot”. She called back: “So do you!” 

She was right. And it was an exchange that cheered me for the rest of the day. In fact, it still cheers me, when I think about it. 

That feeling is something you cannot buy. But that doesn’t stop us trying. 

Forever chasing 

Everywhere you look, there’s a sale on.

With every sale, there’s a hint of a win, something new, something just for you… and “well it can’t hurt to look”. Suddenly, you’ve spent £50 on something you’d never even conceived of ‘til it hit your Instagram feed 15 minutes before. 

And it does feel good… for a minute. You might get a second rush when the parcel drops through the letterbox. Then your object nouvel gets put away, or worn once, or used a handful of times… then it’s forgotten. And you’re 50 quid poorer.

The ‘hedonic treadmill’ suggests that our happiness (or lack thereof) is actually quite stable. It will always return to baseline, whether you win the lottery or lose an arm. The smaller the high, the quicker you’ll return to “normal”. 

And so we keep chasing the highs – never to be fulfilled. 

When the fun stops

I find modern marketing and advertising so vindictive, because it’s all based on spotlighting our insecurities and selling the “solution” back to us. 

It’s been going on in the beauty and fashion industries for decades. But now it’s invading our homes. You can’t buy a house, but you can “transform” your space with a cheap sunrise projector from TikTok shop. 

Even cleaning products have gone viral, for god’s sake – thanks to Ms Hinch and all of us spending way too much time locked down. The most utilitarian thing I could think of has become “hedonic”. Perhaps because it’s an affordable luxury – and cleanliness is all people can control in a broken housing market.

You’re forced into a tiny houseshare, but don’t worry – you can buy this “viral” folding airer from Amazon to save space. You’re being exploited by your landlord, but a new set of plastic containers can help! 

If you tried to sell any of that crap to a turn-of-the-century laborer, or a Victorian, heaven forbid – they would’ve responded with a baffled “how long will it last?”. We used to buy for durability and function. 

We’re sitting ducks for sales psychology. £39 sells more than £35. No ‘£’ signs on menus sells 10% more. “Shrinkflation” keeps prices the same while reducing portion size. “Charm” pricing, anchoring, the decoy effect, BOGOF, constant flash sales, “drops”, and scarily targeted ads… all engineered to keep us hooked.

Consumer culture sells us a “self” at a discount – outfits, gadgets, wellness routines – that promise transformation. Funnily enough, we never transform. And we don’t even notice.

Finding the off-ramp

In better news, there’s another kind of happiness: eudaimonic wellbeing. This is the kind you get from the pursuit of meaning, self-realization, growth, and authenticity.

A few non-hedonic hacks:

• Buy moments, not presents, for peoples’ birthdays: A day out, a cream tea, concert tickets, or a National Trust membership if you’re feeling particularly generous. 

• Buy handmade where you can. Things made with love will continue to generate love. Materials that are carved or forged or woven have resonance, while plastic has none. Some research even suggests the frequency of wool and linen is healing to the human body.

• Sleep on it: Impulse is truly the enemy of peace. Try the “like and save” method – put it in your basket, and don’t buy until the next morning. You might find the urge has passed.

It’s not an easy task to “pursue meaning” in modern times. We’ve got bills to pay.

Thankfully, we have our whole lives to work on it. And it starts with focusing on moments – like mine on the paddleboard. 

Moments, unlike things, leave a lasting impression. 

A Canada Goose jacket for a nursery run. A Range Rover Vogue for the food shop. A nanotech wrist-worn ECG monitor to tell the time. A smartphone with more processing power than a NASA shuttle. 

The €160 Gore-Tex quickLACE Mud Contagrip® EnergyCell+ (seriously) hiking trainers that celebrity influencers have declared essential daywear.

“Smart” capability has besieged our fridges and radiators, adding hundreds or thousands to the price tag.  

As technology’s “uses” become more banal than ever thought possible, simple tools and utensils that “don’t do anything else” start to feel old fashioned.

There’s a phrase for all this: “performative utility”. 

In other words, our daily products have become overpowered.

When the product becomes the task

I may be something of an angry dad stereotype, in that I just want things to work. 

I don’t want to be caught out on a 3-hour train journey when my bluetooth headphones die or fail to connect. We never had these problems in the ‘90s. What was wrong with wires?! They got tangled sometimes but it was better than sitting in miserable silence.

I don’t want an instruction manual for my toothbrush. And I definitely don’t want to pay £800 for it. 

And paying for 5 different streaming services and still getting shown ads is pushing me to the brink of a brand new DVD collection. 

Everything we’re being sold has 100x more capability than we actually need.

Is the era of “enough” gone forever? 

Doing one thing well

Fairphone. Community lawnmowers. The Patagonia fleece that lasts 20 years.

“Deownership” is a nice way around this – from cars to pasta machines, creating an economy where everyone can share, and no one can splash out on silly preferences.

If we must continually march technology onwards, perhaps we could combine two useful functions – instead of adding surplus ones. 

The Teasmade was a belter of an invention. It took a water heating element and an analog clock and gave us the peak of humanity. Fresh, hot tea before your feet hit the floor. It was as far as robotics ever needed to go. 

What about the humble bidet? Take the seat of a toilet and the tap of the sink. A revolution. 

I’ll also accept watches that become step trackers and heart rate monitors. Those things save lives. And I’ll take a £400 Garmin Forerunner that gives me relaxation reminders over a £14k Panerai that’s submersible to 500 meters. For the simple reason I’m not a deep sea diver. 

If you’ve had an eyewatering garage bill “because of the electrics”, you’ll be on the side of modularity. Parts you can see, order, and swap out.

An Anglepoise (for a convenient example) has 14 main parts. It’s made of springs and joints and bolts. Anyone can purchase and replace them at a low cost. Unlike anything listed in the opening paragraph of this article.

You get this when things are handmade, not factory-robot-made. So looking for ‘handmade’ in product descriptions is usually a good start.

The most useful thing in your life (that’s not your phone)

You can’t say laptop either. Hard to think, isn’t it?

For me it’s perhaps a mug, for coffee. Shoes come in pretty handy. You might say a pen knife or a newspaper. 

If you work with your hands or in the garden, you’ll probably say your tools – now that’s a good one. A real thing with familiar weight, made of wood and steel. That’s a proper handheld device. 

The problem is, if everything’s in one place, so are we. 

Most of our daily tasks are on our phones, so that’s where we live. If we can buy everything on Amazon, we’ve lost the butchers and the bakers and all the beautiful, natural, communal benefits that come with them.

I know there’s pressure to keep up with the Joneses. 

But maybe restraint is an even better “flex”. 

I’m not usually up on TikTok trends… but there’s one recently I’ve found pretty shocking.

It’s called stooping. And it’s definitely a new low.

Every day across New York City, hundreds of precious items are thrown out of brownstones onto the Upper East Side pavements.

People are chucking them out for curbside collection – sometimes because of a death or a house move, but more often because a wealthy socialite is having a redec… and last season’s furnishings have become declassé.

As much as 80% of it will end up in out-of-state landfills.

And it isn’t trash. It’s urns, china, ski gear, fur coats, fine art, pianos, antique bureaus, Ercol chairs, 1950s lucite vanities. The waste is unimaginable.

Imagine instead: the day you leave your parents’ home, you’re given a set of things.

These things have to furnish your home for a lifetime (or, okay, maybe a reasonable time). Decades, not years. No impulse buys, dodgy Amazon electronics, or rickety flatpack shelving units allowed.

What do you really need? How basic could you go? Would a sofa, a bed, a desk, and a good set of knives cut it (pardon the pun)? And what would the world look like if we all did this?

Well, obviously there are a few reasons why we don’t. 

1. Most of us don’t inherit a country pile full of antiques
2. Most of us don’t have the money to buy nice (so we buy twice – or more)
3. Relentless advertising, the drive towards novelty, keeping up with the Joneses…

And sadly, most of us are still too comfortable with the idea of just “chucking it away”. 

But there’s no such thing as away.

I’m thinking about all this because I did a very meditative knife sharpening course recently. 

Most household essentials are now built too cheaply to be “worth” maintaining. Even knives – literally tough as steel – often get chucked before they get sharpened.  

While the concept of “throwing away” is familiar to anyone over 30, upcoming generations are painfully aware there is no “away”. “Away” is poisonous landfill sites in third world countries.

But pollution isn’t the only problem. Owning everything we “need” pulls us away from our communities…which we actually do need. 

The loss of gathering 

Before affordable washing machines, people met at the laundrette. Before hairdryers and electric shavers, we congregated in salons and barbers. If you’ve ever gathered round a vinyl player or “backied” a mate’s bike, you’ll know the feeling of necessary togetherness. 

Now, a cul-de-sac of 20 people own 20 lawnmowers. How often do you reckon they’re all needed at the same time? 

We’ll part with £300 before we’ll knock on the neighbour’s door. Maybe because we don’t know our neighbours well enough – or at all. Is there a “dirtiness” in the borrowed or used? Is there a bashfulness involved, maybe? A reluctance to bother people? 

Things used to be so scarce they were community assets. 

Ovens, smithing tools, maypoles. Materials that felt alive – linen, sheeps’ wool, clay, tree bark, rough iron. Now, things overwhelm us. Our polyester clothes charge us with static. Weightless tupperware pings violently off our shelves.

The loss of ritual 

It’s the year 20,000 BCE. You walk from your hut to the ceremonial bonfire – your rainstick comes with you and back. 

It’s 1980. You drive from your house to your office block – your prized fountain pen moves from your briefcase to your desk, and back.

Do our disjointed, digital lives, in which we switch coffee shops every week and houses every couple of years, create a kind of chaos in which keeping things is so difficult, any attempt at permanence feels pointless?

Or are we so disconnected from our things, we just don’t really care? How many times have you lost a £1000 iPhone? A nice pair of sunglasses? A piece of jewelry? I’ll bet it’s more than once in your life.

Tools and weaponry were the beloved companions of historic humans – we died without them. 

Now, the only tools we hold are our smartphones. And we don’t love them, we’re addicted to them. It’s an abusive relationship. It’s hard to care, to feel love, for an object that’s designed to die as soon as you’ve paid it off. 

(Although, people do seem to love their Roombas… so that’s something.)

This may have been something of a preachy thinkpiece… but it’s certainly not blameful. People do what they can, and they buy what they can afford. 

In the spirit of being a little more helpful, let me share a few ideas:

A way to think

Next time you buy, try to calculate cost per use (CPU). 

Cookware is a great opportunity for this. A £50 set of pans will be burnt, scratched, and unusable in a couple of years. Ceramic or cast iron will cost 3 to 4 times as much… but last at least 10 times as long. 

A £10 supermarket lamp might break after 1000 switches. A £100 Anglepoise should endure 10,000. (If it doesn’t, we’ll fix it til either you or we no longer exist.)  

A place to shop

My new friend Tara Button was inspired to create Buy Me Once when she received a Le Creuset cast iron pot as a gift. She curates objects of beauty and durability, where each purchase can be a lifelong possession. 

Some things to buy 

A few of my top lifetime (or long-time) buys (and I’d love to hear of any favourites you have – drop us your recommendations at hello@anglepoise.com and we might feature them in the next newsletter). 

A Barbour Waxed Jacket 

• What it is: Not only do Barbours last (as long as you keep them waxed – their service centres will do it for you). But they look even better when they’ve become a bit battered / borrowed / run over with a Land Rover. 
• What it costs: From £238 (but you can find them for much less on Depop)
• Where to find it: Barbour

Le Creuset Cast Iron Round Casserole

What it is: Widely considered the most versatile piece in the Le Creuset oeuvre, this casserole (also known as a cocotte or Dutch oven) comes with a lifetime guarantee (and would probably survive nuclear war). 

What it costs: From £209

Where to find it: Le Creuset

The Vitsœ 606 Universal Shelving System

• What it is: An iconic yet utilitarian piece of design by Dieter Rams, this modular shelving system can be expanded and configured to meet your needs over time.
• What it costs: Custom pricing
• Where to find it: Vitsœ

A Dualit Classic Toaster 

• • What it is: Dualit’s 80th anniversary is approaching, and it’s well deserved – all of their ‘Classic’ range is hand-assembled in the UK, and its origins are in commercial kitchens so they’re reliably robust. Plus you can buy spare parts.

• What it costs: Classic range from £170, standard from £64.99

• Where to find it: Dualit 

Chilly’s Everyday Staples Set

• What it is: Stainless steel means durability. Included cleaning tools mean maintainability (if that’s a word). And refillability means 100 million pieces of plastic saved, according to Refill. Those well travelled on the Continent will know there are fountains everywhere, but we’re lagging in the UK – so Refill’s app shows you UK top-up spots.
• What it costs: £75 
• Where to find it: Chilly’s

An Anglepoise Lamp

• What it is: An iconic British design offering adjustable lighting with a classic aesthetic. (Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.)
• What it costs: From £115 
• Where to find it: Anglepoise

Thank you for reading my ramblings. 

I’d love to hear what you think, or any “lifetime buy” recommendations you have. Drop us a message at hello@anglepoise.com.

Love,

Simon

To mark the anniversary of the Original 1227 design, Anglepoise will unveil a new limited numbered edition of 400 pieces of the lamp. It will have a unique hand polished metal finish, hand-spun aluminium and contrasting brass components. It comes complete with a burgundy twisted cord cable. The machined brass fork block will carry an individually etched number on the back. Additionally, there will also be a specially designed 90th Celebratory logo etched into one of the steps of the base. During Milan Design Week this new edition will be on display, along with artefacts from the Anglepoise archive. These illustrate the brand’s storied history

Visually unchanged since its introduction in the 1930s, the Original 1227 lamp, designed by George Carwardine, remains a signature product. It is instantly recognisable as an Anglepoise lamp. Since its creation, the lamp quickly gained iconic status. It became admired worldwide and set the standard by which other task lights are measured. An Anglepoise lamp’s practical, problem-solving design, balletic engineering and ability to place light exactly where you want it, has made it an unparalleled companion to creative endeavors. Over the years it has illuminated the studios of Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth and Roald Dahl, amongst many others.

“The lamp’s lasting appeal lies in the fact that it solves a genuine problem and has no frivolous parts. Its anthropomorphic form gives it a certain charm, too. It moves like a human being; it is that quirkiness, along with technical perfection, that makes the lamp inherently British.” ~ Simon Terry, Custodian and fifth generation owner of Anglepoise.

We have already begun our 90th celebrations this year. Which will include a number of events and product launches to celebrate the occasion. With spring in the air at the start of March we felt it was the perfect time to launch this collection.

The 90 Mini Mini range has become a key product in our range, and its smaller and more flexible configuration, with it’s use of USB as a power source increasing the options for where it can be used and also allow it to be dimmable. This product has certainly increased in popularity over the last couple of years with our customers . These bright versions in Avocado Green, Sunburnt Orange and Turquoise Blue have been treated a little differently to reflect our heritage and pull three colours straight from a product range we did in the 1970’s. Whilst bringing the treatment bang up to date. With smart black components including the springs, bolts and spring hanger working to enhance the bright colours and an off-white inner reflector to increase the light output, and pulling the design together.

from office staple to style icon

Anglepoise marks 90 years since the launch of the Original 1227 desk lamp, at Milano Design Week with an installation which pays tribute to the brand’s core values and signature playfulness. Anglepoise unveils a stripped back 1227 in polished aluminum with brass components, to mark the anniversary, as well as a collection of iconic 90 Mini Mini lamps in three new vibrant and nostalgic colourways.

We shall be exhibiting between the 7-12 April 2025 at Brera Props
Via Statuto, 8 – Milano. And shall be open from 9:30am until 7:00pm.

Join us for an informal talk at 2pm daily with the 5th Generation Custodian of Anglepoise Simon Terry. Sharing anecdotes and stories from the last 90 years. 

We will also be celebrating with aperitivo from 5pm each day.

We look forward to seeing you there and if you need to reach out in advance of event to our reginal Sales Managers then please do so:

Ed Lanwarne, el@anglepoise.com (UK)
Jeanne Duquenne, jd@anglepoise.com (EMEA)
Rob Sargent, rcs@anglepoise.com (USA)

Looking forward to seeing you there. And you can find the location here

Anglepoise with 5th Generation Owner Simon Terry, invited a selection of the Press and Dealers to an immersive workshop experience, hosted by our friends at the beautiful Carl Hansen & Son showroom in Bowling Green Lane in London.

The purpose of the event was to begin the soft launch of celebrations around 90 years of the iconic Anglepoise 1227 lamp, and the recent B Corp certification that our team have achieved.

The event started with a brief introduction from Simon then the fun began! The assembly of parts and bringing Original 1227 products to life. As a special twist those involved were able to swap painted components in black, grey and white to create truly unique lighting companion.

“I wanted to thank you once again for inviting me to the event last week. It was truly inspiring to hear Simon share the rich heritage of Anglepoise and the passion behind such an iconic brand. My lamp is now proudly perched on my desk at home, providing a much-needed burst of light on these dark autumn days.”

Photography credit @elenabazu