Naturally Unique Veining

No two pieces of stone are ever the same

Alabaster is a natural stone, so every piece carries its own veining and subtle variation in color. The fixture you receive may therefore differ slightly from the images shown.

Good to Know

Fifteen is where we stop stocking — not where we stop making

Fifteen drops fill a three-storey void. An atrium, a hotel stair, or a full-height lobby needs more, so the count is not capped. Tell us how many and how you want them arranged — gathered, spread, or cascading — and we'll build it. Same disc, same rod, same cord, just more of them. Send your ceiling height and a photo of the space and we'll come back with a layout before anything is made.

A Bead on a Wire, Not a Lamp on a Stick

The rod goes through the stone. That one decision is the design.

Almost every pendant light ends at its shade. The cord comes down, the shade hangs off the bottom of it, and the structure disappears inside — you are meant to look at the shade and forget how it got there. Marlen does the opposite. A slim rod runs from the ceiling straight through the middle of a short stack of alabaster discs and keeps going below them, finishing as a thin point of metal in mid-air.

That is a small change with a large consequence. Threaded onto a line rather than hung from the end of one, the stone stops being a shade and becomes a point on the line — the same way a bead reads on a string, or a single stone on a pendant chain. Lit, the effect sharpens: the discs glow and the metal above and below stays dark, so from across a room you see a small bright mark suspended in a thin vertical stroke. There is no lamp shape to register, only a lit interval.

The scale follows from that. Each drop is barely an inch wide — narrow enough that a cluster of eleven still lets you see straight through it, which is why the counts run so high without the fixture ever feeling solid. Hang one over a nightstand and it is a full stop; hang fifteen down a stairwell and it is a line of punctuation falling three storeys. And because alabaster is quarried rather than moulded, every disc in that line carries different veining — the geometry is exact, and the stone inside it never is.

They are completely different fixtures, so this is worth thirty seconds before you order.

3 Lights · Linear hangs from a straight bar and is 39.4″ wide — three drops in a row. That's the one for a kitchen island, a counter, or a long console.

3 Lights · Cluster hangs from a round plate and is only 11.8″ across — three drops bunched together at staggered heights. That's the one for a stair landing, a small entry, or anywhere you want a vertical shape rather than a horizontal one.

Because on this fixture, more drops means longer, not wider. From 3 lights to 15, the width only goes from 11.8″ to 21.7″ — but the drop goes from 59″ to 157.5″, nearly three times as far.

So choose by how much height you need to fill, not how much floor you need to cover. If you want to cover a wide table, the linear versions are the right answer.

Yes — genuine natural alabaster, cut and polished. Never resin, never plastic made to look like stone.

You'll be able to tell: real stone is cool to the touch and heavier than it looks, and every disc carries its own faint veining. On a cluster, the discs will not match each other — some milkier, some warmer. Because they're small and hung close together you notice this more than you would on one big shade. That's what quarried stone does; it isn't a fault.

No. The LED is built into each drop — nothing to source, nothing to match across eleven of them, and no mismatched one six months later.

The honest trade-off: at end of life it isn't a bulb change. Contact us if a drop ever stops working and we'll advise on parts.

Yes. Every drop has its own 150 cm / 59″ cord that shortens independently during installation, so you set each height rather than accepting the one it arrived at.

On the clusters the cords are cut to staggered lengths on purpose — a group hung level looks like an accident. Over an island, hang the lowest disc 30–36″ above the worktop; anywhere people walk, keep 7 ft above the floor. Need more length for a stairwell? Tell us your ceiling height when you order.

A soft dry cloth on the stone discs — and keep water off them. Alabaster is porous, absorbs it, and leaves a mark that won't buff out. The metal rod can take a barely damp cloth followed by a dry one.

No sprays, no polish, nothing abrasive. Switch off and let it cool first. Once or twice a year is plenty.