My mother is in Cebu and I’m in Toronto. For years the time difference was a wall. Now at six in the evening the lamp goes orange and I know she’s walking back from the market, and I call. We talk more than we did when I lived there.
The Yonder lamp
Keep someone’s sky in your room.
Yonder glows with the colour of the sky over any place on Earth, right now. Set it to the city of someone you miss. It wakes when they wake, turns gold when their afternoon does, and settles into night on their time, not yours.
Right now over Lisbon it’s —:—. Working out where the sun is. …
Ships free, worldwide Thirty nights to decide No account, no subscription
How it works
It knows nothing about the weather. It knows exactly where the sun is.
The colour of a clear sky is almost entirely geometry: how high the sun stands over the horizon, and whether it is on its way up or down. Yonder works that out for one place you choose, every few seconds, and paints the answer in light.
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01
Choose a place
A city, a village, a boat, a pair of coordinates. Wherever someone you love is waking up. You set it once from your phone, and Yonder remembers for life.
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02
It finds their sun
An onboard clock and the orbital arithmetic astronomers have used since the 1800s give the lamp the sun’s height over that horizon, to a tenth of a degree.
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03
It becomes their sky
Rose at dawn, white‑blue at noon, amber at golden hour, indigo at night. We photographed real skies for a year to tune the three hundred and sixty shades in between.
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04
Then it leaves you alone
No account. No cloud. No Wi‑Fi after the first ten minutes. The clock drifts about a minute a year. We decided we could live with that.
A day in Lisbon
Twenty‑four hours, one slow breath.
This is the sky Yonder will paint today in Lisbon, minute by minute, from the first grey before dawn to the last of the blue hour. Drag through it.
—:—…
now
Try another place:
Lisbon
Live, from this page
It is always some time of day, somewhere.
These eight lamps are reading the real sky over eight cities as you look at them. Nothing here is a recording. Come back in an hour and every one of them will have moved.
The skies on this page are computed in your browser from the sun’s position, the same way the lamp does it. Nothing is fetched from anywhere. Yonder can be set to any place at all, including the ones with no night in June.
The object
Opal glass, turned ash, one brass dial.
We wanted something that would be beautiful switched off, and look like nothing else switched on.
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1
Hand‑blown opal glass, 180 mm
Thick enough to melt 120 LEDs into one unbroken colour. No hot spots, no visible source. Just a sphere that happens to be a sky.
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2
A base turned from a single blank
Oiled ash or black walnut, so the grain runs unbroken all the way round. No two are alike, which we think is the point.
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3
One brass dial
The only control. Turn for brightness. Press to pause the sky and use Yonder as an ordinary warm lamp. Press again to let the sky back in.
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4
Nothing that listens
Inside: a quartz clock, a coin cell good for ten years, and a small board that does the arithmetic. No microphone. No radio, once it’s set.
- Height
- 262 mm
- Globe
- Ø 180 mm opal glass
- Base
- Ash or walnut, oiled
- Light
- 120 LEDs, 2 to 400 lm
- Colour
- 360 tuned sky shades
- Power
- USB‑C, 12 W, 2 m cable
- Clock
- Quartz, under a minute a year
- Connectivity
- Wi‑Fi for ten minutes, once
Letters
From people who keep a sky.
I built the first one in the winter of 2023, the year my brother moved to Wellington. The distance was fine. What I couldn’t stand was never knowing what kind of day he was in.
Inês Carvalho, founder. Her lamp has been set to Wellington for three years.
I’m at sea nine months of the year. My wife’s lamp is set to wherever the ship is; I send her the coordinates when they change. She says it’s the only way she knows whether it’s a decent hour to text me.
We bought the pair when she took the residency in Edinburgh. Mine is a different colour from hers every single hour of the day. It is strangely comforting to be able to see exactly how far apart we are.
Choose a sky
One lamp, or two.
Every Yonder is made to order in Porto and ships in about five days. Both finishes, any place on Earth.
Yonder
One lamp, set to one place.
$240free shipping
- Ash or black walnut base
- Set to any place on Earth, changeable any time
- Two‑metre braided USB‑C cable
- A linen place card, letterpressed with your coordinates
- Five‑year warranty, glass included
The Pair
Two lamps, each set to the other’s home.
$440save $40, free shipping ×2
- Everything in Yonder, twice
- Shipped to two addresses, in two time zones
- Mix the finishes if you like
- Two place cards, one for each sky
- Each lamp always knows what the other one is seeing
Thirty nights to decide. If it doesn’t earn its place on the shelf, send it back and we’ll refund every cent, including the return shipping. In three years, eleven people have.
Questions
The things people ask us.
Does it need Wi‑Fi?
For about ten minutes, once, when you set it up from your phone. Then it disconnects and never asks again. The clock and the sun arithmetic live inside the lamp, so it keeps working if your router dies, your Wi‑Fi password changes, or we go out of business.
What about clouds and weather?
Yonder shows the clear‑sky colour for that place and that moment. We tried weather. It made the lamp grey for most of the year in most of the places people love, and it needed a connection to do it. The sun turned out to be enough.
Can I change the place later?
As often as you like. Hold the dial for three seconds and the lamp reopens for setup. People move. The lamp moves with them.
Can I use it as a normal lamp?
Press the dial once. It pauses the sky and holds a warm white at whatever brightness you’ve set. Press again and the sky comes back in, exactly where it should be.
What does it do at night there?
It settles to a deep indigo at about two percent brightness, the colour of a clear night with a city underneath it. If you’d rather it switched off entirely, you can choose that during setup. Most people don’t.
What about places with no night, like Tromsø in June?
Then your lamp has no night either. It will hover around golden hour for weeks. We think it’s the best advertisement the place has ever had.
Where is it made?
The globes are blown in Marinha Grande, where Portugal has made glass since 1748. The bases are turned and the lamps are assembled and tuned in our workshop in Porto. Shipping is free everywhere a courier will go.
What’s the warranty?
Five years on everything, including the glass, as long as you didn’t drop it. If you did drop it, write to us anyway.