A GALASHIELS designer is helping illuminate the new V&A Museum in Dundee with his award-winning suspension lamp.

Neil Poulton's Scopas Lamp was hand-selected by curators to be included in the £80 million attraction's Scottish Designs Galleries.

Neil's award-winning incomplete sphere lamp now glows above the architecture of Robert Adam, the interiors of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and glassware of Christopher Dresser, as well as artwork from the Beano cartoonist David Law, early computer games and even a pair of Hunter wellington boots.

The 55-year-old former Galashiels Academy pupil is delighted to have been included in the collective story of great Scottish designs.

Neil told the Border Telegraph: "This is such a great honour.

"The people from the V&A contacted me about six months ago and they wanted to me to supply all the background to how the lamp was designed.

"It is suspended right in the middle of the new permanent gallery - and from the time I've spent here in the gallery it is getting a lot of attention.

"This is a most impressive building and I'm pleased to be part of it."

Neil graduated from Napier University in 1985 with a degree in Industrial Design after his schooling in Clovenfords and Galashiels.

He celebrated by collecting the Product Designer of the Year Medal from the SIAD Chartered Society of Designers.

Three years later Neil gained his Masters degree in design at the Domus Academy in Milan.

After relocating to Paris in 1991, he began to specialise in the design of 'deceptively simple-looking mass-produced objects'.

And there has been a steady flow of awards for his technology and lighting designs ever since.

Neil's Scopas light, which was designed for Italian manufacturer Artemide, has already won awards in Europe and the USA.

The apparently incomplete suspension lamp is ever changing in its appearance, depending from where it is viewed.

And it breaks the mould of monotonous forms that normally characterise this kind of central lamp.

As well as hanging in the new V&A Museum, an interactive screen next to the exhibit allows visitors to deconstruct the Scopas design.

Neil added: "The virtual screen allows people to take the lamp to bits and then rebuild it on the screen.

"There have been schoolchildren taking my lamp to bits for most of the morning, which has been fun to watch."

As well as Neil's Scopas Lamp, the Scottish Design Galleries features a wide range of furniture, textiles, metalwork and ceramics, to fashion, architecture, engineering and digital design.

Joanna Norman, Lead Curator of the Scottish Design Galleries, told us: "The influence of Scottish design is not limited to one country, it has been felt around the world .

"Drawing on the V&A’s world-famous collections of art, design and performance, it has taken several years of careful research to establish this unique collection of objects which together will tell a fascinating and relatively unknown story.”

After attending the opening of the V&A last week in Dundee Neil spent the weekend at the family home in Clovenfords before returning to Paris this week.