Lamp and lighting styles
|
NATURE+ART Lighting COLLECTIONS
Our lamps and lampshades reflect the tastes, interests, and creativity of Sue and her entire staff. And while Sue doesn’t purchase the raw materials of our lamps — the carved Ainu bears or antique cloisonné pots that she loves — with an eye to website groupings, there are some themes that run through our work. The most basic unifying theme is expressed on our home page — Nature + Art — and places us squarely in the contemporary Arts and Crafts movement, one which pays homage to the designs of the past while incorporating and expanding on them. Wood, metal, stone, glass, clay, mica, paper, and natural leaves are recurring materials used in our lamps and shades.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
Our classic Craftsman and Arts & Crafts lighing includes both hand-crafted wooden lamps in the Prairie tradition, with complementary mica shades, and hammered copper and brass lamps. Among the designs in mica that are particularly well suited to Craftsman interiors are the Windowpane series and the Lines & Squares group, both of which are shown on the site on lamps and as ceiling or wall lighting. In addition to these contemporary pieces, we often have antiques, particularly European Trench Art and American Heintz Art Metal. We show some of these pieces on our site to illustrate the kinds of work we do in designing special lampshades for these wonderful lamps. We are happy to send digital photos, with size and price information, of any antique pieces available in the shop.
|
|
SOUTHWESTERN AND RUSTIC
In addition to the copper and brass lamps mentioned above, we have several pine cone table and floor lamps. These are all well suited to our Southwestern or rustic lampshade designs, such as the Anasazi and Lightning borders and Pine bough design. Sue loves carved stone, bone, and antler animals (especially bears) and we have created special shades for them. Because we design and make all of our lamps and shades, we have tremendous versatility. We can adapt designs from your home or your lamps to use in shades; mica, hand-painted paper, and paper-cut lampshades can all be custom ordered.
|
|
ART GLASS Lamps
In recent years we have developed relationships with several local glass artists and have wired their wonderful and distinctive pieces into spectacular lamps. These Art Glass Lamps have lights inside their bases, with the three-way switch illuminating the base alone, the shade alone, or both together. We show these lamps with mica lampshades, hand paper-cut lampshades, and parchment paper shades with Japanese Tsuru paper borders. For our 2008 Collection in November we introduced our newest series with Lindsay Art Glass and Sue’s inspired, colorful mica shades. Sue also purchases, when available, antique Art Glass pieces, notably Phoenix glass, which are similarly lighted inside and completed with appropriate shades.
|
|
ART POTTERY Arts and Crafts
American Art Pottery forms another part of our Arts and Crafts collection. We make lamps from the work of Ephraim Faience, Door, and Lonesomeville potteries and complete them with mica, hand-painted paper, and hand paper-cut lampshades. Again, we occasionally have antique Art Pottery pieces, both American and European.
|
|
ASIAN THEMES AND STYLES
The art and design of Asia — its imagery, forms, and materials — are an important part of the American Arts and Crafts tradition. Sue has an abiding interest in antique cloisonné and champs levée, netsuke, bamboo vessels, and baskets. We have a wonderful selection of one-of-a-kind antique pieces at the shop. Our Asian style offerings on the web at the moment are items and designs that we can re-create on a continuing basis. These include a beautiful series of Japanese metal lamps and mica shades with hand-cut mulberry designs that echo the bases. We also show a number of bamboo lamps, some with traditional carvings and some with contemporary styling, and a beautiful contemporary Asian-style raku pot in red or gold.
|
|
AFRICAN CARVINGS AND TEXTILES
Sue began the lamp shop in 1972 after her service in Africa, in the Peace Corps, and we have made lamps and lampshades from African carvings and African textiles since that time. One of the difficulties of showing these on our site is that each piece is a distinct and unique piece of art. We do have a wonderful selection of African lamps and Kuba cloth shades in the lamp shop and are happy to send digital photos along with size and price information upon request. Since Sue designed the ceiling and wall lights with African imagery we can offer these as shown or can adapt the designs for other projects. We also feature an African Marriage Stick floor lamp, where the carved sticks are more similar than most other carvings.
Please call us for more |
|
PERSONAL VISION
The last group of designs that has emerged is, perhaps, best characterized as personal visions, certainly a term that could apply to Sue’s Blazing, Brilliant Skies — a continually evolving group of shades that come and go from the shop before any formal portrait of them appears and would not be easy to duplicate exactly. This series began life several years ago as a group of custom ceiling shades evoking Desert Sunsets and has continued to expand. It now forms not only the basis of her newest shades, inspired by Art Glass pieces, it also includes more tones of sky and of emotion — from highly intense to calm and tranquil.
In keeping with the tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement we share and support the commitment to combining function and beauty in our surroundings, of using our local flora and fauna as inspiration in our designs, as well as learning to appreciate the design heritage that we encounter in the arts and crafts that Sue purchases to turn into our unique, eclectic and even inspired lighting.
|
|
|