Vesper is the evening hour — the bell that closed the libraries at Magdalen, the candle lit on the chapel windowsill at four o'clock from October to March, the moment when the long table fell quiet because the readers were still reading.
The store catalogues objects for that hour. Things that belong on a scholar's desk after dark, or in a satchel walked across a quad, or on the windowsill where the lamp is left on. We do not sell aesthetic. We sell the actual objects: a print, a mug, a tote, a shirt. Plainly set, classically lettered, made to outlast a few of your moves.
The founding pieces are texts alone — Latin phrases the language has carried for two thousand years. Memento Mori. Tempus Fugit. Cor ad cor loquitur. Ars longa, vita brevis. They are not new ideas. We have set them again, with restraint, in the manner of the broadsheets and binders' devices. Future pieces will carry the engravings that traditionally accompanied them — Vesalius's anatomical plates, eighteenth-century hourglass mottos, the candelabra from a Bodleian table.
Vesper ships from a small print workshop in the United States. We do not advertise. We do not stock. Each piece is made when it is ordered; expect it within seven to ten business days. Correspondence is welcome — write to us at hello@vesperlighting.co.
— Vesper