In Print and In The Classroom

Pick up a copy of the December 2009 issue of Old-Home Interiors Magazine, and you will find a few Century Studios' lamps pictured! We are included in an article about reproduction lighting in this issue of the magazine. We have three lamps pictured and an overview of our work included with several other contemporary lamp and lighting professionals.

As a result of an article about us in a local newspaper, we were asked to give a short presentation to two preschool art classes this past week. To tie in with the theme of many pieces creating a single work of art, we took a small window hanging and showed the children how we start with a drawing, cut glass to fit a shape and explained how we join the pieces together to form the glass picture. The classes then worked with transparent colored papers and made their own "stained glass" windows.

Two Lamp Projects

Last week, each of us worked on separate lamp projects. While Irwin was creating a geometric turban shade for a client in the Chicago area, Bill laid out a new floral shade for our showroom.

The design of the 18" Geometric Moorish Turban harkens back to Louis Comfort Tiffany's earliest inspirations for lighting design. The onion dome shape makes a distinctive table lamp or inverted hanging shade. In the above photograph, Irwin is about half done laying out and fitting the geometric pieces on the form. In the photo to the right, the top row is being put in place.

While Irwin was creating the geometric shade, Bill worked on a 16" Tulip shade for our showroom. We will show the completed shades in a future posting.

Bell Pepper Lamp Base

Century Studios is pleased to introduce a new lamp base to our offerings of Tiffany reproduction bronzes. The Bell Pepper is a beautifully detailed base and is created at our St. Paul, Minnesota studio. This lamp features a heavily ribbed body and an arm-set with five supports. The Bell Pepper can be created to work with 14" or 16" shades. The example shown below holds the 16" Fish shade which we featured in the September 22, 2009 installment of this blog.

15" Spider Lamp

We sometimes get unusual color requests for our lamps and enjoy the challenges these requests present. Geometric style lamps are generally created in the white, amber or green tones. For this piece, we were commissioned to create a 15" Spider shade which shaded from deep blue to lavender.

Using three separate pieces of glass, the color selection of the pieces was carefully composed so the transition would be smooth. The completed shade and base are now in the collection of a California client who is very pleased with the results.

For more information on Spider lamps, see our blog posting from August 21, 2008.

20" Daffodil Shade

One of Tiffany Studio's more popular floral shade designs is the 20" Daffodil. This is one of the only shade patterns where the flowers are inverted, rather than "growing" from the bottom of the shade. Because the flowers are clustered at the lower edge of the shade, the 20" Daffodil makes a wonderful chandelier fixture when hung over a dining table.

We recently completed the 20" Daffodil shade pictured in the photo shown above. The coloration of the shade is light and airy. This shade is currently available in our showroom and is shown on the Pottery Base - Kendrick Design. The pottery is inspired by a Grueby Pottery original and was created by Jemerick Art Pottery to our specifications. We created the reproduction metalwork and light cluster which illuminates the shade.

There is an original Tiffany Studios' black and white photograph in the collection of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum which shows a bunch of Daffodils which have been gathered at their base and draped over a lamp form. This photo was presumably used for reference by Clara Driscoll during the design process of this shade.

We created the 20" Daffodil pictured to the right in 2002. This lamp is in a private Minnesota collection. In this rendition, the colors are deeper than the shade shown above.

Lady of Shalot

Using John William Waterhouse's painting of the Lady of Shalot as inspiration, we were commissioned by a client in Wyoming to create a stained glass window. The subject of the painting/window is taken from a poem by Tennyson, which tells of the Lady of Shalot who lives in a tower, weaving the scenes she sees reflected in a large mirror. When Sir Lancelot happens to ride past, she cannot resist looking out the window but must then leave her tower and float down the river in a boat to Camelot, dying along the way.

We've created a horizontal window from this image once before for a client in South Dakota, but this time the window presents a cropped version of the painting because the stained glass panel is vertical.

Bill is seen working on the layout of the window in the photo to the right, with the partially completed window shown above.

The face, hands and title on the boat have been hand painted, then kiln fired onto glass. The rest of the color and detail was created by choosing glass to flesh out the image. At the client's request, the completed window has a decidedly Autumnal coloration with strong garnet reds and emerald greens in the foliage. The completed window is seen to the left.

Arts & Crafts Show Weekend

The 10th Annual Arts & Crafts Show weekend is now behind us. We set everything up on Friday in preparation to greet visitors to the show on Saturday and Sunday. Once again, our booth featured the "Lamp Cave", a 10' x 10' darkened room created in the booth to show off our lamps. Attendance was up for the show, and we had a great time greeting old friends and introducing our work to new people.

The show ended on Sunday at 4pm, and we packed up what was remaining in our booth, dismantled the Lamp Cave, and brought it all back to the studio. Monday was spent cleaning and restoring the showroom. It all felt a bit too familiar, having moved in and opened our new showroom in May!