The Governor House, Amritsar: Lighting an 1863 Circuit House

Most new restaurants want to look like the future. The Governor House goes the other way. Inside a circuit house built in 1863, it feels like an evening in a well-kept old home: chequerboard marble underfoot, dark timber panelling, portraits in gilt frames, and a run of rooms you move through one arch at a time.

The architects, Renesa Architecture Studio, led on this project by Sanchit Arora, treated the house as a sequence of rooms rather than one large dining hall. Each room has its own temperament. When AD India featured the project, it described exactly that: a sociable Drawing Room, a quiet Reading Room, and a grander Council Chamber and Assembly Hall, with arches framing the view from one into the next.

Our part was the light. Every chandelier, wall light, pendant, lantern, table lamp and floor lamp in the house came from Delhi Brass. This is how it reads, room by room.

The Drawing Room is the house at its most social: a vaulted ceiling, a black-and-white chequerboard floor, a grand piano, and arches opening on three sides. Its centrepiece is the Baroque Foliage chandelier: twelve cast acanthus arms in antique brass, two tiers of scalloped cream shades and clear crystal drops. Under the curve of the vault it reads as a warm canopy rather than a bright one.

On the piers between the arches, the Directoire double wall light brings light down to eye level. It has an X-frame backplate, an urn finial and two linen-shaded candle arms. The slimmer Brass Torchiere Shade Sconce, a turned brass stem under a small scalloped shade, picks out the edges of the room.

Look through any arch and there is another light waiting: the cut glass of the Foliate Crown chandelier in the next room, the glow of a lamp on a far table. Each room is partly lit by a glimpse of the one beyond it. The same Baroque Foliage chandelier appears again near the bar front, above the blue-and-white jars, so the rooms feel related as you move between them.

That phrase is the whole lighting brief. Arora told AD that he was not trying to recreate how the house was lit in 1863. He wanted the feeling of a time before every ceiling was evenly lit, when you understood a room through pools of light, shadow and a few points of emphasis.

For a lighting maker, that is a demanding brief. No single fixture can carry a room, so the work is spread across many: shaded light at eye level, warm glass overhead, lamps on tables and beside chairs, and shadow left where it falls. Brass suits it. Under low, warm light, antique brass glows rather than glitters.

Through one of the Drawing Room arches is a small, deep-maroon room with blue-and-white porcelain on a ledge and a marble-topped console. Above the table hangs the Foliate Crown chandelier: five acanthus-leaf arms, each holding a globe of diamond-cut glass, around a central cut-glass bowl. Two brass floor lamps with pleated shades stand either side of the shelf, and a candle wall light catches the mirror behind the console.

The Reading Room is the quietest room in the house, with a coffered timber ceiling, bookshelves, and one wall in a deep green plaster. On that wall, a Directoire pair stands either side of an 18th-century-style portrait, symmetrical in the way an old house would have arranged them. Over the tables hangs the Prism Filigree chandelier, eight antique-gold arms hung with crystal prisms, and a Regent floor lamp with a pleated shade lights the corner by the shelves.

The bar sits beneath an arch, with a lit back-bar, carved brackets and a bronze hound on guard. Over it hangs the Sunburst Brass Dome Chandelier: a wide bowl of cast brass openwork with sunburst medallions, palmettes and ribbon swags, lined with pleated ivory fabric that glows from within. Behind it, the smaller Shield Brass Urn Pendant continues the theme in a single light, with lattice cutwork and a tassel finial. On the back bar, a pair of fringed table lamps keeps the light low and warm.

The Council Chamber has the most formal table in the house: a single long table under a deep vault, with velvet curtains drawn back at the door. Above it hang Governor Hexagonal Hall Lanterns: tall six-sided lanterns in antique gold, with glass panels under a crown of gilt leaf finials and candle lights inside. Fleuron double wall lights, cast brass with crystal drops, mark the vault, and a pleated floor lamp stands at the room's edge. This is the most ceremonial lighting in the house, and the most candle-like.

The largest single light in the house hangs over another long table, in a dark-panelled room with a wall of antiqued mirror. The Grand Cylinder Lantern is ten feet of curved glass and leafy scrollwork, with twelve candle lights in two tiers. In the mirrored wall beside it, every candle doubles.

On the striped, panelled walls nearby, the Ornate Brass Double Shade Sconce brings the light back down to eye level: a fluted brass body with acanthus detail, two scrolled arms and scalloped cream shades with braided trim. It is the two-light companion to the Torchiere sconce in the Drawing Room.

After the dark timber of the rest of the house, the Governess Parlour has warm ochre walls. Here the lamps do most of the work. Pairs of Regent Corinthian Column Floor Lamps, slim fluted brass columns with cast Corinthian capitals and pleated shades, stand either side of the doorways. On a side table, the Parlour Brass Urn Table Lamp, an antique brass urn on a stepped base, sits just below the edge of a Toledo chandelier, whose black-and-gold tiers and crystal drops are just in frame. It is the room that comes closest to a lamp-lit sitting room in an old house.

A heritage interior is easy to over-light. One bright ceiling fixture can undo the panelling, the plaster and the patina in a single evening. The Governor House does the opposite. It has many smaller sources: chandeliers that warm a ceiling, wall lights at eye level, lamps on tables and beside chairs, and shadow left in the corners. Brass is the common thread. It is the material an 1863 house would have known, and under low light it still looks the part.

Our thanks to Renesa Architecture Studio and The Governor House team, and to Avesh Gaur for photographs that show the rooms as they feel in the evening.

Every piece is made to order in our workshop in antique brass. Browse the full chandelier and wall light collections. Architects and designers specifying lighting for a hospitality or heritage project can work with us through the Trade Program or contact the Delhi Brass team.