These precision lighting units were developed by Rudolf Wendel over eighty years ago to "create an individual and artistic indirect illumination" that fulfills the "aesthetic requirements of each interior or garden". His objective was an illumination system that would dramatically enhance the beauty of the illuminated object without the viewer being aware of the lighting system. Indeed, in many of these applications, the light seems to originate from within the object itself.
That Rudolf Wendel accomplished his objectives was evidenced by the early acceptance of his novel lighting systems in such prestigious locations as the Museum of Natural History and the royal residences of the Duke of Windsor and Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Since that time, Wendel Optical Framing Projectors have been selected to illuminate Michelangelo's Pieta at the Vatican, the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, the Wrightsman Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a host of outstanding private art collections.
Rudolf Wendel's success was due to a combination of his projector, a comprehensive understanding of the physics of optics and, most important, an artistic appreciation of how the lighting would provide the greatest enhancement of the intrinsic beauty of the object to be illuminated. That symbiotic combination is the key to the Wendel installation. It is no accident that the very few practitioners of Wendel framing projector lighting in the world today all trace their skills to Rudolf Wendel or one of the handful of his close associates.
Thomas P. Richmond had direct association with one of the three original associates of Rudolf Wendel for over five years. During this "Old World" apprenticeship, Tom Richmond learned Rudolf Wendel's philosophy of subtle artistic lighting, the application of geometrical optics and the details of fabrication and installation.
Thomas P. Richmond, Inc. was established in 1987 and proceeded to develop and manufacture its own improved version of the Wendel Lighting Optical Framing Projector.
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