Wednesday, June 29, 2011

22" Geometric Shade

This past week we completed a 22" Geometric lamp for a Midwest client. This large "brickwork" design is often called the "O'Brien Brick", possibly because the original Tiffany Studios' client was named O'Brien. Our client requested a dramatic shift in color on the shade. The rich red at the top of the shade blends down to a lush verdant green at the bottom.

The shade is shown on the impressive Telescoping Library base. This highly detailed base features six lights and hand applied wire work on the stem.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Impressionist Window

We recently completed a window for a local client which was inspired by a large Impressionist landscape painting by Monet. For our client's purposes, we trimmed the image down to a smaller detail of the overall painting. So, we have a bit of landscape with a riot of brightly colored flowers in the foreground - a very colorful window hanging! Windows can be designed at several pricing levels, and this represents the starting point of our window pricing and design.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

18" Alamander

At Century Studios, we have introduced a flurry of new shade designs this spring. The most recent reproduction Tiffany shade design is the 18" Alamander. This shallow cone features a wealth of flowers in full bloom across the surface of the shade. The shade is the same size and shape as the 18" Clematis cone.

The Alamander (also called Allamander and Allamanda) is a warm climate plant native to South and Central America which grows as a large flowering shrub. In the wild, Alamander is often found near streams and ponds and is a fast growing, sometimes invasive plant. It is often called "Golden Trumpet" even though cultivated varieties can have white or purple flowers.

For this shade, we created flowers in a multitude of amber and yellow glasses, taking advantage of the deep oranges to create shadow and depth. The background glass for this stunning shade is executed in a fracture glass made by Schlitz Studios (Schlitz was an exceptional glass maker that has been out of business for over a decade). The warm amber background glass is accentuated with green and orange fractures which lends a fullness to the design. Texture was added to the shade with ripple borders.

The shade is shown on the Flask Base. This exceptional base has green glass blown into the bronze openwork.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

14" Chestnut Shade

Century Studios is pleased to present another new original shade design, the 14" Chestnut. Taking our inspiration from an antique hand painted glass lamp base, Bill Campbell created this wonderful shade design.

Designing a new shade pattern is always a challenging prospect, even when the shade is small. Bill referenced not only the painted lamp base, but also photographs of chestnut trees in bloom. This shade has a three repeat design, and getting each third to flow harmoniously together took a lot of fiddling and skill. The resulting design has a fullness and depth, showing the leaves and flowers of the chestnut in full bloom.

The shade colors were chosen to work with the glass base. The light green background and pale pink/white flowers are contrasted with deeper greens in the leaves. This design would be equally stunning with bolder tones for the leaves, flowers, and background.

In the above photograph, Bill is shown moving the foiled pieces of glass onto the waxed form for soldering. Below, a close-up photograph shows the detail of the design.