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.
Chrome Coffeecake lamp
The Albany Film Fest is coming up next week. You can see this lamp in the flesh at the Friday night gala and possibly on Saturday as well. After that it will be available in my Etsy shop.
Over the past several months, I’ve found several old heaters that, though they hardly fit a traditional lamp/lighting category, nonetheless seemed to have potential. Although at the time I bought them it wasn’t quite clear to me how I could use them.
The first one was just a shell – of an old maybe-gas, maybe-kerosene heater – that I found in an antique store. Some paint on the top and bottom, a nice reproduction vintage lightbulb, and a few bits and pieces, and it looks like this:
La Cage à Lumière
A few weeks later, I stumbled on another heater, electric this time, at the Depot for Creative Reuse. It took several hours to get it disassembled and cleaned up, and even then I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
But then I remembered something the instructor had mentioned in a class I’d just taken at The Crucible. And it came to me: This would be a perfect housing for color-changing LED strips. And after a grueling trip to IKEA just before Thanksgiving (don’t try this at home, kids), I had what I needed.
Here’s the result, in living color (apologies for the wavery camera work).
Both these lamps are available in my Etsy shop, along with details about size, price, and functionality. I also expect to have other LED lamps coming up. Stay tuned!
A few photos from the Art Museum of Los Gatos’ Holiday Marketplace. See more on the museum’s Facebook page.
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 couple of years ago, I was browsing the aisles of my local 99 Ranch Market – a great place to kill a spare hour with a friend – when I found these really fun tins (full of crackers, of course). I had to have them.
When the time rolled around to put the tins to use, I found some plain white shades to go on top. But they seemed not quite adequate. Then I remembered the joss paper I’d acquired on another trip to 99 Ranch…and the die was cast.
Luck & Crackers lamps
I’ve been told that the bases and shades seem to be speaking different languages. I can see – or rather hear – that. But given that the bases by themselves speak three or four…well, I don’t see the problem.
Nonetheless, I’m selling all the pieces separately. Visit my Etsy shop for details about the lamp bases and shades. For more pictures, see the Desk & Table lamps page.
“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.
Several years ago, for an open studio, I made these two lamps from some lovely bronze gears I found at Alco and a couple of faucet pop-ups from Urban Ore. I also took on making shades from scratch, which was not a fun experience. Here’s what they looked like then:
Take One
After the show, I stored the lamps in one box and the shades in another in my bedroom closet. Time passed.
Then one day I noticed the box with the shades was open at the top. Ooops! My aptly named cat, Pandora, had snuck into the closet, gotten into the box, and made a little nest of the shades.
I tore everything apart and chalked it up to experience. More time passed.
Finally, I decided the parts were just too good to leave in storage. I found some ready-made shades I could work with, and after completing the Tiger, Tiger birdcage, opted to recover them in sheet music. But the same stripy motif wasn’t gelling for me. Then one morning in the half-light between dreams and waking, I got the image of circles. And there it was:
Danse Mecanique table lamps
For more photos, see this page, or visit my Etsy shop for dimensions, pricing, and other details. You can also contact me.
One of the lamps I made for my house has a straw coolie hat for a shade. The straw is sewn onto layers of scrap paper, and when the lamp is turned on, ghostly images show through: indecipherable words and other mysteries. That hat, and the little house-shaped birdcage I found in a junk store, inspired this project.
What to use for the lining eluded me until I found some old sheet music at an estate sale. Structural dilemmas ate up more time. End to end, this light took me almost a year to figure out, and a month to build in my spare time.
To see more photos of the finished product go to Birdcages. To read details about dimensions, possible uses, and pricing, see the Etsy listing or drop me an email.
