Another iteration on an old design, collaborating with Maya Buffett-Davis on the shade element.
Maya gave me a selection of painted newsprint paper, which I laminated with fiberglass. It’s something I’d wanted to experiment with more, since making the Sconce Speakers using painted paper.
Another iteration on an old design.
Pointy switch comes from the sawn-off end of an old paint brush.
A lamp refining an earlier design of lamps #35 and the Stereoviewer lamp.
The switch uses the same pull chain mechanism by dowel I used on #38. I found it to be a more simple and reliable mechanism than the one used in previous similar designs (at right) which used a rotary switch with a dowel threaded onto the end. These rotary switches could also only be activated when turned clockwise, while the pull chain mechanism could be activated by turning either direction.
The back end of the dowel switch is flush with the back face of the lamp.
Made with one piece of maple. Cut out a semi circle, Then the cut-out semi circle was resawn in half along its width to create the side pieces
It is the first lamp to use fiberglass as its base material, an experiment which proved to be reasonably sturdy.
It’s also the first lamp to have switches accessible from both sides. This was often an issue with designs that had switches on the sides rather than the front middle. It became problematic when the lamp was sitting on one side of a bed and the switch was on the opposite side.
To achieve this, I used a pull chain socket, and threaded the pull string through the dowel. As the dowel is turned from either side (and in either direction), it pulls the switch and turns the light on or off.
This lamp combined the Stereoscopic slide viewer elements of my Stereo-Viewer with an earlier lamp design. It can be used to view 3-D slide photographs, or simply as a lamp.
The eye piece was carved out of a block of basswood, with two holes bored through it 2.5 inches apart.
I carved it into shape with a dremel, sand paper, files and a rasp. I added magnifying lenses removed from loupes, and measured their focal distance.
Behind the eyepiece, in the interior of the lamp is the slide holder. It holds the slide at the proper focal distance and diffuses the light from the bulb behind it to backlight the slide.
I had been waiting for the right use for this plug with two finger holes.
Lamp made for my friend Lucy. For the fiberglass I used a drawing of a house in Oberlin, Ohio made by her sister Olive. Olive gave me the drawing and it hung on the wall in my bedroom for years prior.
I was a few inches short on wood, so I left this gap on the back.
A remake of lamp #13. Made with Douglas fir, homemade fiberglass, and a knob from an old drill press handle.
The turn-switch knob is at the end of a long dowel, going to a switch with its wiring hidden inside the wood.
I experimented by mixing in white epoxy-based paint with the resin as I made the fiberglass, and it ended up producing this cloudy texture.
I made this one after returning from being out of town for two months. My first lamp using Douglas fir.
This first one was made on commission for a fellow who found my site and emailed me to order a lamp.
The turn switch knob came from a wooden knob I found at a secondhand shop and painted the face red.
The dowel for the lamp stem came from a pair of homemade nunchucks I found at an estate sale. The seller said they were made by his teenage brother in the 70s out of a broomstick.
This was the second lamp I’d ever had to ship. I devised this too-complicated system of packaging with string and cardboard suspending the lamp in place in the center of the box. It arrived safely.
A pair of lamps made with pine wood, a found pool cue, and fiberglass-laminated old lined paper. #31 has vertical lines and #32 has horizontal lines. The blue lines in the paper match the blue of the stain on the pool cue.
Maple wood and homemade fiberglass with found wooden sphere as pull chain pendant.
The design was inspired by this lamp by Jean Trenchant.
In between making this lamp and the one before it, I ran out of my stock of old aviation fiberglass which I found in an alley in 2021. I tried searching for similar flat sheets of fiberglass and didn’t find anything that looked as good. And so I resolved to making the fiberglass myself.
I tried making my own fiberglass before with polyester resin and hated using the toxic stuff. It gave me headaches even when I was using it outside with a respirator on. And I could never get the mixing ratios right. I tried using West Systems epoxy-based resin instead and found it much easier to work with and a lot less toxic to be around. It took many attempts to produce a fiberglass sheet that I was pleased with. I ended up using a layer of newsprint paper to give the fiberglass more light diffusion and a good warm color.
Double-length lamp made to hang above the dining table in my new apartment
The lamp ends were made using the same piece of wood I used in the dining table bench
I built an internal structure to hold the lamp’s cylindrical shape. Otherwise the fiberglass bows out in the middle.
Lamp made on commission for my friend Justin Ortiz’s birthday. The first lamp I made since returning to my studio after a summer in New York.
It is a double hanging ceiling light with an upward-aiming ambient light and an aim-able task light.
The ambient light is based on lamp #16 and the task light is a miniature-sized lamp #1.
The lamps are controlled with a two-circuit switch on the task light which cycles: Both Lamps OFF->Lamp 1 ON-> Lamp 2 ON -> Both lamps ON-> Both lamps OFF . This is the first chance I had to implement this switch since experimenting with it.
The task light is counterbalanced by a stone from my backyard, secured to the inside of the ambient lamp with a string stitched through a circle of drilled holes.
Lamp using white-painted plywood and a branch from the bush outside my shed.
Commissioned by Andrew Skrobak, who requested the lamp in white. I hadn’t used paint in making any lamp before, but I had this plywood from a shelf in my Dad’s closet that was already painted white, so I used that.
First lamp design to make the leap from semi-circle to full-circle
It is made using the same fiberglass I found in Swansea, some dowels from the estate sale of a ceramicist (used as rolling pins), and a mysterious block of wood with a concave dip carved out of it that Maya found for me. We later discovered that it is an herb chopping board, which is used with a rounded two-handled cutting knife.
I wanted to deal with the cord in an elegant way, and having it run through the dowels like I have in the past wasn’t an option. So I arrived at this solution, binding the cord to the dowels with a thread wrapped around tightly (I used a fishing line guide tutorial). I sealed the thread with wood glue. I obsessed over the cord with this lamp more than others. I wanted the cord to be a naturally yellowed, old, worn-in plastic color. I had a few contenders but none were the right length. I had some that were the right length, but they were too white or too fresh. The old brown-ish cord came from an old work lamp I got at an estate sale. Same went for the pull-string, it had to be old and yellowed with an old pull thing.
I sourced the plug from the estate sale of Alex Trebek, who had a really fabulous home workshop with tons of old hardware.
My issue with this lamp is that the bare bulb can so easily be seen if the lamp is placed below eye level. Exposed bulbs really bother my eyes, which is why I started making lamps in the first place. I intended this as a bedside lamp, which would mostly be used while lying next to it.
Lamp I made for Harlan’s desert shack, using a piece of fiberglass he fabricated for his shack’s window panels. Complete with matching light switch.
I used these semi-circle ends from an earlier failed lamp, from the same wood drawer as #4.
Harlan’s homemade sheet’s of fiberglass diffuse light with a very different quality than the fiberglass I’ve normally been using, which was factory manufactured for the aviation industry in the 1950s.
I had some fiberglass left over and decided to use it to make a matching light switch.
You can see the fiberglass Harlan made in situ on the exterior of the shack. He had the upper four layers professionally cut, but then made the bottom two with fiberglass.
He sent me photos of it on at night.
A ceiling lamp, second lamp of a pair I made for Brem’s birthday.
Every lamp seems to be a logical step from the one before it, but still variations on the semi-cylinder form. I had never thought to do the side semi-circle pieces as fiberglass before, but it became such an obvious possibility after making the previous sconce #23.
Its placement in Brem’s room.
Wall mounted sconce, similar to #10 & 11, but with a pull chain switch and different aspect ratio.
I’ve had these frames from my high school’s old dark room lying around for a while. They were for contact sheet prints, and they were used for probably decades. They’ve got this orange stain and green felt backing. They’re so cool looking, it’s been impossible to find something worthy of being framed by them. I was thinking of making something for my friend Brem for his birthday, and they’ve always sorta reminded me of him.
Simple pull chain socket and little bracket with wire passing through a hole drilled through the frame.
Some old high schooler tag. Probably done under red light.
Its placement above Brem’s bed, a reading lamp.
The third lamp I made in Swansea was for the dining table. Its design was another riff on #14, using tree branches from the firewood pile in place of dowels.
The second lamp I made for the house in Swansea, using materials found scattered around the property. This lamp design was similar to #5, but I used a jack stand for the base and an old broomstick for a stem.
With #20 on both bedside tables.
