So none of the light is wasted on your ceiling. Most pendants are open at the top, which throws a bright disc onto the ceiling above them — light nobody is looking at, washing out the very shadow you bought the lamp to create.

Here a solid metal dome caps the upper half of the drum. Nothing escapes above it, so what you get is a defined pool of light on the surface below and a soft glow through the stone at the sides. The ceiling stays dark.

Small — 5.9″ across and 7.1″ tall. About the size of a coffee mug. Worth picturing properly before you order.

One on its own reads as delicate rather than commanding, which is right beside a bed or over a counter and wrong over a dining table. If you want presence, take a cluster, or buy two or three singles and set the spacing yourself. A group of small shades reads as considered; one small shade reads as under-scaled.

This is a ceiling-height question, not a table-size one — and it works backwards to most clusters.

Both hang from the same 23.6″ plate, so six lights take up no more ceiling than three. What changes is the drop: 59.1″ against 78.7″.

So: three lights for a dining table, island or entry on a 9–12 ft ceiling. Six lights only where you have 13 ft or more — a stairwell, a double-height entry, a vaulted room. At 78.7″ the six-light is six and a half feet of fixture; on a normal ceiling it simply hangs too low.

Yes — every cord shortens independently. They arrive at 59″ each and are cut or adjusted on site, so you decide the height of every drop in the room rather than accepting one from us.

On a cluster, hang them all long first, stand back, then shorten one at a time. Do not set them level — the drops are meant to spiral downward, and staggered heights are what make a group read as arranged rather than accidental.

G9 bulbs — a small two-pin capsule about the size of a fingernail, not a screw-in bulb. It pushes into the socket, and it is what keeps this shade so compact. Bulbs are not included.

Buy a few spares at the same time: G9 isn't sold in every supermarket, and on a cluster you want every drop matching rather than one odd one out. Choose warm white around 2700K — cool white through alabaster looks grey.

We strongly recommend it, and the reason is specific to this shade. Stone doesn't burn — this isn't a fire warning. It's about heat.

The metal cap that stops light escaping upward also means very little airflow above the bulb. Heat that would rise away from an open pendant stays inside this one. A filament bulb warms the stone every evening and lets it cool every night, and that repeated expansion and contraction is where hairline cracks begin in any natural stone. An LED barely warms it at all.

Because they're cut from real quarried stone, not moulded from resin. Every drum has its own veining, and some glow a little warmer than the ones beside them.

On a single pendant you'd never notice. On a cluster hung side by side it's the first thing you see — and it's what tells you the stone is real. A set that matched perfectly would have to be plastic.

A soft dry cloth on the stone. Keep water off it — alabaster is porous, absorbs it, and leaves a mark that won't buff out.

The metal cap can take a barely damp cloth followed by a dry one. Switch off and let the bulbs cool first. Once or twice a year is plenty.