Having an accident one day

This was suppose to be a simple rewire for this customer. They had 2 plaster bowels that had come out of a movie theater built sometime in the 1930s and they had picked them up at an auction and kept them for a number of years and in their new house they were finally going to put them up. There are 4 lights in each bowel and all that we had to do is just rewire them. I had finished this bowel and was carrying it to the hanging area and…..well I tripped and dropped it on the floor. Words were said. Lots of words. So I picked up the pieces and placed them back on my work table and had to figure out what to do.

Putting it back together was the only option but some pieces were totally destroyed and missing forever. Only about 80% of it survived in some form or another. The first thing to do was just to get the bowel back together the best that I could with the parts that are left so in the second pic that that what I did.

Picking up the pieces

Just getting the plaster bowel back together. As you can see, large chunks were totally missing. Now I had to learn how to rebuild the missing areas with new plaster and get them all to match back up and not look just cobbled together but look as it was.

Close up of some of the damage. Lots of the edge molding and Greek keys were broken or just gone.

Re carving the missing sections. Now I had to learn how to carve plaster. This was hard for me to do because I have never been a sculptor ever.This was a new process for me but it did require a trip to the hardware and art supply store to get the tools needed to carve plaster and any excuse to buy tools is a good day in my opinion.

Back together and painting to match the other one. It took me about 3 weeks in total to get this accident back together. Here in this pic I am starting to repaint the piece to match the other one. Another part of the process that I did but didn’t show was to take cotton gauze like you would use for making a cast on a broken arm of leg with plaster and reline the inside of the bowel to give it more strength and make it a unified whole instead of pieces just reassembled. All in all it actually too good of a job because anyone who looked at both of them always picked the original one that wasn’t broken as the rebuilt one. I could have just called the customer and said, oops sorry I dropped it and there is nothing that we can do, but to me I had to make it right and rebuild it because there was no replacing it with another one. The customer was happy and I learned some things along the way.

Stained Glass Shade

Something happened here. Something very damaging and drastic happened to this stained glass shade in my customers home. Something involving kids and running I suppose. Well she brought this in to us to be repaired. The broken pieces of the shade were in the hole that is in the first picture. This first picture is taken after i removed the broken pieces of glass out of the shade and prepped the hole for the new glass.  In this first pic you can see the new pieces of glass that I had already cut and copper foiled for the replacement .  This lamp shade is done in the Tiffany style. Not all lamps done with the copper foil are Tiffany, but the foiling technique lets the artisan use use smaller pieces of glass as where the leaded style would allow you to  use very small sections of glass. To create the leaded look I have to run solder down the length of copper foil to create the leaded look and then some liquid patina applied onto the new solder to give it that aged look.

So this is after the the pieces are soldered into place in the lamp on the front side and then it has to be soldered on the back side of the shade as well.

Here it is all repaired and ready to go. I used to do a lot of stained glass work in school and it has been some 30 years since I have done any stained glass at all so now I am looking at tool catalogues and online sites for some things I need.  Now I have the glass bug and I have a project in mind.

I have this gothic light that came out of a church and it has a broken panel of glass. The whole thing stands about 30 inches in length or 76.2cm for the rest of the world,  The idea that I had is to do a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design for the 6 glass panels in this light. Maybe something like the image below.

Not this exact design but something like it or inspired by his work.  Not like I don't have enough to do but when the inspiration hits you have to listen to the muse when she speaks.

1950s Sputnik Floor Lamp

This is the base of a 1950s sputnik floor lamp. The gentleman who brought it in is an avid collector of any mid-century modern, well anything. Like most of my customers he and his wife have a special feeling for lighting and lamps. Good for us here at the Lamp Shop.  As seen in the picture above, this piece is a little beat up but sill in good shape and with a little TLC we can bring it back to life and get another 60 years of service out of it.  It was a bit rusty and pitted but the rust hadn't eaten through the base or any of the other metal in the lamp.

The wires and balls here at the top of the lamp is what gives it the name Sputnik, because of the balled wires coming out of the top. This was after all the beginning of the space age. there are 2 sections of pottery on the piece as well. They were in perfect shape and no chips or cracks on them any where. Just some ware on the gold gilding in a few places.

Now that it is all finished it turned out great and looks brand new. Personally I haven't been a big fan of these kind of lamps but I have to say that this one has grown on me while we have been working on it.

Surprise box from ebay

So this was a box of lamp parts that a customer brought into us that she had got off of ebay.  This was a floor lamp from sometime in the very late thirties or maybe early fourties. It was exactlly what she was looking for but it was in very rough shape. After we unpacked it we noticed that some pieces were missing and some parts were broken as well.

We replaced the broken and missing bits and got the whole thing working again, well because that is what we do. It took a month or two because we were just starting our move to our new location in Troy so this was really the last lamp we did in Houston and the first one we did in Troy. I think it turned out well and the customer was very happy.

only 4 months........

So now it has been about 4 months since we have started our web page and finally now I am able to start working on it. It is bad when all the the departments consists of just my self or Darrin and he is busy with all of our online shops at ebay, etsey and a few others. We have been all moved into our new digs since the beginning of September but we are far from organization of much. We are still playing my favourite game of hunt&search when it comes to finding some parts here. I know we have this, but where is one of my best chants when meditating on the location of a lock washer or fat-boy socket shell.

The holidays have come and gone now and now we are settling into the hardest part of the winter I feel. That cold and deary time of the year, so we all need good lighting especially now so come in folks!  We have been very busy with a wide variety of projects and repairs. We have a few turn of the 20th century floor lamps to restore and I have even built a custom table lamp for Interior Design Joy, owned by Joy Turner-Price in Piqua Ohio.

Right now I am restoring a 1910 Chicago Mosaic lamp for resale and 2 huge outdoor coach lanterns that have been languishing in our shop for some time. Just finished a 1930s polychrome 6 lamp hanging fixture for a couple in northern Ohio and Darrin just finished a 1940s cast brass chandelier for a customer in St.Paris Ohio. There is plenty more in the Q-line for us to work on as well and I don't want to give the impression that we only work on vintage and antique lighting. We have replaced many of sockets in newer lamps and even worked on some non-lighting things as well like an air purifier for one gentleman. So come in or call with what ever you have and we can probably fix it for you.