Gunter & Co Meets…Sally Storey
Irene chats design with John Cullen Lighting’s Design Director, Sally Storey
John Cullen Lighting has long been a brand we’ve worked with, admired and never fails to impress us with their designs. For the first in our new video series, we couldn’t think of anyone better to share their story with us than the brand’s Design Director, Sally Storey.
Irene: Welcome to our new series of interviews with industry leaders from the design world! We’re here today with John Cullen’s Design Director, Sally Storey. Welcome Sally! Tell us a little bit about the origins of John Cullen and your role on a day to day basis.
Sally: It’s a wonderful story in a way and a real opportunity that happens so rarely. I was studying architecture at university and had a passion for light. It was mainly more about day lighting but it also lead to me discovering John Cullen who was just setting out (I read about him in a magazine) and he was focused on doing lighting for the home and artificial lighting. So I wrote him a letter asking if I could come and help him. I was a second year architecture student so I go along and he actually said yes! I thought at the time that I should really write to other people too but nobody else replied but John. Serendipity, I say! He was working from home in a small flat on Smith St in London. During the interview we just got on really well. John pointed out the window towards a corner shop on Smith St and said he had just taken on the lease of the space and asked me to design his showroom. I thought, I’d say yes now and worry about how to do it later on. That was the beginning. So that became the start of my dissertation in that then I used the showroom, which was a bit like how our lighting pod is today in the studio, about how to present light and how it changes. One space can be the same but your interpretation is dictated by the way it’s lit. And so this little corner shop, which had blinds that came down and the room changed. My thesis was on bringing people in to see how they reacted to different environments, whether it was cold light or warm light, very dramatic and how they felt. That was my dissertation and the point at which I suddenly fell even more in love with light. Every project I did in my third year was on light within architecture and when I left, the choice was really do I do a year out before I go on to do my masters. And my year out was with John Cullen. All the holidays in between I was working for John doing all his plans and he made me a partner really from the beginning. There were about 4 people there when I joined properly at the end of university. And very sadly, John died about 2 years later. I was left with the business manager running the business and I didn’t know what else to do so it all just started from there and continued from there.
Irene: Amazing! And tell us what is your role on a day to day basis now that the company is a whole different beast?
Sally: I feel that I’m the creative director. That’s what I love doing. I feel a passion for the way things look and feel. I’m far more visual than writing. I also enjoy being able to develop designers. I have an amazing role. Not so much in the structure but being able to be involved in product design because I’m at the end of where design is going in many different aspects. The more you’ve done design, the nicer it is to see other young designers coming up. I get so inspired by their ideas and I think you also begin to edit ideas. You can streamline it to what works. I love my job as much today as I did at the beginning.
Irene: If you think about in comparison to different industries that are maybe less focused on residential designers or may different lighting designer strategies, how would you describe your approach? What is the first thing you think of when you start a design?
Sally: I think I’m lucky as well because I’m so design orientated and have done it for a long time. I’ve been involved in commercial work as well. Separately I’ve worked on a lot of hotels and offices and super yachts but what I find is that the knowledge you gain from that, drives you to consider what is the best for residential. You’re exploring ideas the whole time and facing different challenges and thinking my goodness that would be perfect for my own house. Back in the day when I started out, the fixtures were so big and to me it was all about miniaturisation. And still is about that. And what’s amazing is that what was considered miniaturisation in the late 80s/90s, is so totally different to today. You can be much more miniature now. It’s rather wonderful how one trend has been able to continue and develop and get better and better. I suppose something I think about is you go into a space and a lighting designer is often a bit like an interior designer in that you have a palette of textures and materials and we have a vocabulary of light effects and it’s playing with those effects to make the space work harder. I believe rooms don’t just have to work in one way. They can be transformed with light. It’s really important to know what to light and what not to light and that play of light and shadow is really what it’s all about. It’s about understanding that balance.
Irene: That’s super interesting! I hadn’t thought of what not to light and that seems such an obvious one but I guess it’s as much about what you add as to what you don’t highlight. Really interesting. And you mentioned working with young, upcoming people within your team and how that can be a real inspiration. What qualities do you look for in your design team and what sets them apart from the rest?
Sally: I think it’s probably like you, when you’re interviewing somebody, in that you want to see a spark. They don’t need to know so much about light - I like them to talk me through their portfolio and I want to see a spark of creativity, a thought that might be unusual. It’s also a thought process because you wonder why they generated that idea and then whether or not you’re in tune with it and where it could take you. Also looking at care and detail. Care is so important in the way we deal with people or spaces or anything. In any job of excellence, a bad detail can kill a project. Detail to me is really important. You know whether or not you have a resonance with them. They need to be fun to be with because in the end, the greatness of a team is if there’s a synergy and everyone enjoys being together.
Irene: The perfect ingredients! What would you say is your proudest project that you’ve worked on to date?
Sally: That was probably ones I can’t even talk about. I’ve had such an opportunity on super yachts and other things and some of those have been the most fun. And it’s because of those that have allowed me to become a judge on the design and innovation awards for super yachts. One of the things that are really fun are often my next project because I get excited about the people I’m dealing with. For example, I worked on Ham Yard hotel, which I loved and Kit Kemp was really fun. I look back and early on, whilst it was challenging, I worked on David Bowie’s apartment in New York - I was completely starstruck as he was my hero. I’m not sure if it was the work or being star struck but it was a stand out project. I love the challenges and I think sometimes what I love is working on different styles. I love working out the solution for a really minimal interior and that’s quite exacting. How can I make it nice and comfortable to be and soft and inviting but at the same time going to a historic building where I have to be equally creative in thinking how can I bring some of the more contemporary ideas into a historic space to think how I can make those flowers on the table be lit without spots in the ceiling. How can I hide them in the chandeliers? I’m lucky because it’s that constant variety to allow me to reevaluate different solutions.
Irene: And I remember once listening to one of your talks and you mentioned your own home. Is it something that allows you to experiment in different ways and test out things that you might not want to do on a client’s project because it might be a little too risky before knowing if it actually works?
Sally: I haven’t quite got the budget of my clients so don’t get to do the experimenting I’d like. I do more in lighting and then have more MDF whereas they’d had beautiful joinery. I do try things out though. I have a lot of surface manager spot lights in an old ceiling and I wanted to be sure that on a listed building, if you want to create some magic, it doesn’t matter being surfaced on a ceiling because actually it disappears because what you see is what you light. And if you took it away, you lose something in the room. With joinery and things, the most experimental has been on super yachts because that’s like doing a dual box in itself.
Irene: Where would you say your main inspiration comes from. We touched on it earlier when you said abut working in commercial, hospitality, yacht designer etc influences how you approach residential design but how do you come up with the new products you develop within John Cullen?
Sally: Well at the moment we’ve just created, what I’m calling the lockdown light. I just thought with all this miniaturisation and there’s a trend that you have shelving - I quite like joinery lighting because I feel it’s a way of adding light like a lamp and soft - so we came up with the Minim, which is literally the size of a 5 pence piece. It’s 18ml deep and low glare and fits into a piece of joinery. It’s 15 ml across but you can add collars to it so you could add a brass collar to it for example - almost make it like a pair of earrings - and I think to me, miniaturisation is still the trend I have never let go of because I think there are a lot of other trends happening within lighting - at the moment it’s all about linear whether it’s track, LED etc - but that I think will come and go. If you can create the effects in a way that you hardly see them within miniaturisation. It’s a bit like we do a small miniature down light - you can have it in a long fit but the nice thing about it is that you can change the beam variety within it. So I can make that be directional on a kitchen island where one fitting can pin spot the flowers but give a wide wash as well. It’s making less do more.
Irene: I can see how that would give you more longevity. There are a few occasions within interiors where you want to see those big lighting features but most the time you want to accentuate what’s already there and make it sing rather than draw attention to the fitting. It’s about the effect it creates.
Sally: It’s all about the light - the product is actually a side thing. The smaller and more discreet I can make it to achieve the desired effect, the more successful it is in a way. There are phases we all go through in different eras too.
Irene: At the end of the week or a long day, what do you do to switch off?
Sally: I think the real thing that makes me stop work is travel because then I’m so far away from it that I really do switch off. The problem is that when you’re in your own house, you can’t stop thinking about lighting. It’s always there. And I love it. It’s slightly my fault. But when I go away, it’s like I’m in an unreal world and there hasn’t been much of a switch off in the last year!
Irene: So come June/July when we can hopefully travel again, what would be the first flight you’d book?
Sally: The weird thing is that I revert to India. I love India. I went on my honeymoon and fell in love there. It’s one of those places that never ceases to excite. It’s the colour. It’s the exuberance really. The architecture is amazing. The old palaces and the detail. It never disappoints. It’s almost frustrating! I come back uplifted and look back at photographs and the lighting I’ve shot there - getting that fretwork pattern and it always makes me smile.
Irene: And lastly, what are you working on at the moment?
Sally: The product team are looking at other new launches. We’re just doing a framing projector now that’s the force of frame within the spotlight range. In projects, I feel spoilt in that there’s such a variety on. I’ve got this amazing house that’s being made out of ground earth that’s really contemporary and challenging but the client has an incredible art collection so there’s this wonderful thing of minimalism meets texture and things. There’s also the most amazing old buildings we’re working - an old listed project. They’re both so amazing!
