Christmas holly lamp

Well a little late for Christmas I am posting my holly and berry lamp, which has received many lovely comments over the festive period :). And once again some photos of the making process. It was made using the copper foil – or Tiffany – method like the Tiffany Studios used back at the end of the 1800s 🙂 but to my own design.

Above: the finished shade.

Here are the first pieces of holly cut from beautiful rich green stained glass – each cut individually by hand. Also the first ‘berries’ in rich red and brown and clear glass. If you look closely you can see the thin strip of copper foil around each marble as well as on the holly shapes. I used my smallest fibreglass mould to shape the design.

Here is the shade from above with a lot more pieces added… nearly there with the foiling, but lots of soldering to do in the next phase…

Here is the outside view with lots of silvery solder holding it all together – starting to get heavy!

Above is the inside view before it has been finished properly – lots of lumps and bumps!

And finally the finished shade after patina has been added to blacken the solder and the whole piece has been cleaned inside and out before setting on its bronzed stand. Great fun to make and the ultimate Christmas decoration 🙂

Leaf uplighter

The finished uplighter

This uplighter grew – almost literally – from one broken piece of glass given to me by a client. She couldn’t find another lamp to fit her base so she asked me to design a new shade around that piece. I cut lots of leafy shapes in frosted and coloured glasses to match her existing decor and built them up on a basin that was about the right size. Each piece was individually foiled and spot soldered together to create the finished uplighter. She was delighted with the unique result.

The broken piece of uplighter

The first foiled shapes added to the broken piece

More leaf shapes added

The finished uplighter

Steampunk lamp

Steampunk inspired lampshade made using traditional copper foil ‘Tiffany’ technique in stained glass and wire.

Marbellous

The first lamp shade I created. Every lamp has a story to tell and this one has a particularly happy ending…

When I was researching whether to set up my stained glass business at the end of 2012, I came across a call for entries to a glass exhibition on the Contemporary Glass Society website. Particularly exciting for me was that the show would be held at Blackwell The Arts & Crafts House in Cumbria, UK. I had visited this beautiful venue a few years previously and loved the setting overlooking Lake Windermere and all the delightful interior details created by masters of the Arts & Crafts Movement over 100 years ago. Somehow, discovering this opportunity to exhibit my work there seemed like a sign to go ahead with the business. Entries had to be designed to fit with the house, so I set about designing ‘Marbellous’, which you see here. My use of traditional techniques (almost unchanged since they were first used by the world-renowned Tiffany Studios in the USA in the Victorian era for their stunning light shades) and my love of creating unique works in glass inspired me to keep going through the painstaking process of applying copper foil around each of the 500+ clear glass marbles and 200+ individually cut white glass pieces. When it came to the ‘tinning’ stage of the process, I had to hold each marble in pliars because of the heat from the soldering iron, to apply a coat of solder around each one. I spent a long time scrabbling around under the table for marbles that had been dropped and rolled off all over the floor. But still I persisted, seeing the design build gradually over two weeks.

Finally it was finished and I sent my photo in to the renowned judging panel, including the Curator of Glass and Ceramics at the V & A Museum, London, and the Chair of the Contemporary Glass Society. As a brand new company, I had nothing to lose… And as it turned out, all the hard work was rewarded when Marbellous was accepted from hundreds of entries for a place in the prestigious ‘New Glass – Ancient Skill, Contemporary Artform’ exhibition. It was a fantastic feeling to have my work on show amid the designs of Victorian artists and designers whose names are still known worldwide today. And to have the validation of some of the top experts in the glass world.