Monday, October 26, 2009

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.

Monday, October 19, 2009

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.

Monday, October 12, 2009

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.

Monday, October 5, 2009

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.