Here’s a new take on the blender lamp concept. It uses a color-changing LED (sorry, no video this time), or you can swap in a clear, antique-style bulb.
It’s a little bit spaceship, a little bit mad scientist, and a whole lot of fun. I call it The Lamp with Two Brains. Visit my Etsy shop for details.
Recently, I was asked to participate in a holiday fund-raiser at the Los Gatos Art Museum (opening today!), and they asked specifically for more hanging lights. So I dug into the cache of tins I’ve collected over the last year and made these:
Then, I just kept going, and made some table lamps:
The latter are available in my Etsy shop, and there will be more to come. Stay tuned.
(Many thanks to my family members who contributed to this effort! You know who you are.)
I’m not by nature a tidy person. I let things go, too long. Clutter piles up until I’m forced to deal with it. I seldom dust, or clean the bathtub.
But when I’m making a lamp, I tend to go the opposite direction. I want to make it maybe too neat, too matchy, too shiny.
So this time, when I found this beautifully tarnished silver coffee pot, I vowed to work with it as is: chipped spout, uneven patina, slight off kilterness.
That part was easy. It was the shade that was hard. I’d picked up several wire breadbaskets, liking the shapes and figuring there must be some way to use them. And I realized that one of them would be nearly perfect for this lamp – except that it needed to be turned inside out. Which meant disassembling and then reassembling it, preferably without destroying it in the process.
I’d work on it for awhile, hit a snag, and set it aside. Weeks would go by while I worked on other projects. Prying the bottom off was easy. Cutting the wires short enough to work loose took time, trial and error, perseverance. And of course some came off altogether. Reassembly was easy, but reattaching the wires…not so much. I set it aside again.
Eventually though, it came together. One or two last minute inspirations added a bit of extra flair. And now that it’s done I’m sure I was right. Letting the work develop in its own time allowed for better ideas – and even materials – to come along.
It’s almost as if the lamp invented herself. And perhaps she did.
Ms. Havisham
For details or to purchase, visit my Etsy shop.
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
-T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“
Consider, if you will, this pair of oddities made from parts of chafing dishes married to, in one case, a glass bowl, and in the other, the shade from a ceiling fixture.
Nemo’s Brain
Waltzing Medusa
Dare to eat a peach, or maybe two, in my Etsy shop.
“A flying saucer? You mean the kind from up there?”
“Yeah, either that or its counterpart.”
Plan 9 from Outer Space
I’ve had these colanders for ages, and I tried a couple of times to use them. But nothing quite worked out. Then I realized they just wanted to fly solo – or maybe in formation – over a bar or kitchen island, bringing a message of peace and silliness.
Plan 9 colander pendants
For details, visit my Etsy shop.
I recently ran across Gilles Eichenbaum’s fabulous Garbage lamps. Unless Santa brings me a laser cutter for Christmas, I’m not getting anywhere near what he does anytime soon, but I’ve been inspired nonetheless. (Click an image to read more about each lamp.)
Argus Tower
Coffee de Lux lantern
Hopefully, 2012 will hold more like these … and much else besides.
Happy New Year everybody!
A few weeks ago I bought a tiny brass bottle at an estate sale. Two inches tall, heavy and stoppered, it looks like something a genie might live in – a really teeny genie, who can grant only very, very small wishes.
Like say you wish for a million dollars, a long and healthy life, and true love. But all the genie can give you is a quarter off the sidewalk, a good night’s sleep, a smile from a stranger.
But you’d rub the bottle anyway, right? These days, you’d take those slivers of luck and feel grateful.
Here are a few of my recent wishes. I hope you enjoy. (Click the images for more.)
Cozy Flan Tutu
Roswell
The Percolander
Getting the upcycling thing right means collecting a lot of junk. But not just any junk. It has to be junk that murmurs in the precise seductive tone that gets my heart rate up a bit. And, of course, sometimes I’m fooled into picking up stuff that I’ll never use.
Just as often though, I find some weird thing that sits around for months or even years, until one day I find its perfect mate. This lamp is a perfect example.
Funny Face espresso lamp
I found the shade (or most of it) at Urban Ore over a year ago. I didn’t (and don’t) even know what it is, but it spoke to me, so I brought it home. Then recently I saw the espresso pot on eBay. I’d been wanting to make another lamp similar to this one, so I bought it.
When it arrived, I took it to my workshop/stash and started pulling things out to see if I had anything that would work with it. And within moments, I heard the other sound I listen for: the Click.
The Click is the sound you hear when you find that elusive puzzle piece. That one bit of blue sky in the picture you’ve been hunting for – for what seems like days. It’s the sound of getting it right.
It’s hard to believe that up until two years ago, I had never seen a single-serving dessert mold. Then suddenly, they were turning up everywhere I went. Certainly a sign. An image started to form in my mind…
…and I began collecting the parts to make it real. It took over a year, but finally I had them all.
Then I “just” had to assemble them…
Much fiddling and a few frustrations later, I finally got it all together. A mad project, which I call…
The Mad Hatter's Chandelier
This lamp sold online in October 2012.
Twinkle, twinkle, little light
floating up above at night
How I wonder what you are:
spaceship, lantern, disco ball?
Sputnik I
When I started
Sputnik I, I was still
thinking of UFOs.
(I like the way it
looks like it’s
coming in for
a landing.) But by
the time I got to the
second sister,
something else had
taken over…
Sputnik II
I guess you can only
ride a metaphor so
far, then you have
to get off and walk.
Please contact me or visit my Etsy store to learn more about these lamps.
Sputnik III
