Anna Branford

light in steiner/waldorf settings

A couple of months ago when I started reading and thinking about steiner/waldorf understandings of childhood I wrote a blog post about the special aesthetic qualities the philosophy seemed to create. I’d only just discovered this world of books, websites and blogs and was so interested and excited to discover that it had a kind of beauty all of its own. So in that post I tried to identify some of the principles that seemed to me to be guiding the steiner/waldorf aesthetic.

My interest in all of this is different from that of most enthusiasts as I have no children of my own. But I do write for children and make things for children and I have always worked with children. I would like to do all of those things as beautifully, as thoughtfully and as meaningfully as I possibly can. I also love creating and living in a space that is beautiful. So I have been trying to understand the thinking behind the amazing spaces created in the steiner tradition because I personally find them so peaceful, nurturing and inspiring.

But since first writing about the aesthetic, I’ve realised I left out one of the most distinctive features of all. Light. Have a look at these beautiful spaces created in the steiner tradition and I think you will see what I mean.

These are images of Shelley Caskey’s home, borrowed with permission from her beautiful blog waldorfmama.

Shelley’s blog is full of these peeks into her amazing  space. Two especially relevant posts are here and here.

These next examples are from Bending Birches, a lovely blog by Rebecca Smith. This is an image of the peaceful sunroom in her home.

And this is one of the light-filled play spaces she has created.

Two of Rebecca’s posts which further illustrate the distinctive use of light in these kinds of settings can be found here and here.

Light also seems to be an important part of the celebrations and festivals observed within the steiner/waldorf tradition. Waldorf star lanterns are lit in many of these homes. This picture of ‘autumn spice’ star lanterns is from Green Baboon Designs.

A row of softly glowing beeswax lanterns were part of keeping advent for my friend Jeanene and her family whose amazing blog, Earthboys, you can find here.

There are many more examples I could use to demonstrate that there is something special about the way light emerges within these settings. How is this beautiful effect being achieved?

Firstly, it seems to me that as often as possible, the light is coming from natural sources – from the sun or else from candles (especially little beeswax candles I notice!) It shines through windows, skylights and lanterns. This means that it is never harsh or sharp or flickery neon blue, but always a warm, gentle light.

I think the warmth is enhanced by the pale woods like pine and ash for furniture, toys and tools often used in this tradition. The light reflecting from the beautiful tables and benches seems almost honey-like.

The backdrops of the rooms are sometimes plain and pale and, together with the wooden furniture, the effect can be similar to shaker style homes in this respect (another aesthetic I like very much). But if you look at the walls in Shelley Caskey’s home (the first two images featured above) you can see a lovely example of a painting style that is especially associated with waldorf settings, lazure painting. This technique strongly affects the way light fills a space and is fascinating to read about.

Lazure painter Robert Logden writes,

‘Rudolf Steiner encouraged artists to paint walls with transparent radiant color. He used the word “lasur” to describe this new way of coloring walls—where color would feel as though it were in the space and not just on the wall. This provided a pure experience of color—as though one could “spiritually pass through the walls.’

You can read the rest of Logden’s beautifully explained account here.

Another way in which light is guided in these spaces is through the use of translucent cloths dyed in the same soft colours. These are draped over play spaces, across light sources and over windows, filtering and softening the light. This beautiful example is borrowed from Moon Child, a blog by Sarah Baldwin. It shows her classroom at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Maine.

Her shop, Bella Luna Toys, sells the wooden play stands which can be used to create spaces of light filtered entirely through soft rainbowy cloths.

As part of my quest to familiarise myself with the Steiner approach, I recently read Joan Salter’s book The Incarnating Child. Salter offers a very interesting account of some of the thinking behind the use of these coloured cloths and the impact they have on light. She writes:

‘Rudolf Steiner has recommended that during the early weeks it is of immense value to the baby to live within a rose-pink-blue atmosphere. He suggests achieving this by the use of two silk veils, one blue and the other pink. These are placed one on top of the other over the crook of the bassinet and draped around the basket, leaving a space to ensure adequate ventilation. The light shining through these creates a mauve colour; and there is the added advantage of the sharp contours of the world being softened.’

Earlier, she explains some of the interesting esoteric underpinnings of the practice as follows.

‘The best colours for the baby are rosy pink, mauve, pale blue, a sunny yellow or creamy white. Brown and green should be avoided, for they are too ‘earthy’ for the young child. We will see later on that, well into the the pre-school years, the child’s inner experiencing is more oriented to heaven than to earth … It is not incidental that Raphael gave his Madonna’s a rose pink gown and blue cloak, and the Child a golden halo.‘

This is one of Raphael’s paintings of the Madonna and Child to which I think the passage might be referring.

I love seeing the same colours and the same distinctive honeyish quality of the light in these paintings!

I would need to know more about the context of the descriptions of heaven and of the baby’s inner experience before trying to comment on them further. (I suspect many of the misunderstandings about Rudolf Steiner’s thinking emerge from people like me taking snippets of information out of context and then forming confused assumptions about them.) So for now I’ll just admit to finding the concept of ‘heavenly’ colours and light wonderfully romantic and resonant and I can certainly agree that the spaces they fill have a kind of ethereal peace about them.

And there end my insights so far into the beautiful and distinctive way light appears in Steiner and Waldorf settings. I’d love to learn more about this from those of you who have studied and thought about the philosophies far longer than I have. I would also be very curious to know if those of you who are less familiar find anything like the same beauty and inspiration in it all as I do!

Many, many thanks to the creative and inspiring individuals who have given me permission to use their beautiful images and spaces to illustrate the thoughts in this post.