Shadrach's Lamps

[Shadrach]

This lamp is called Ent.
For some reason my camera, an automatic, sucks the red out of the picture. The lamp is redder than the pictures suggest.
It's come up well. There is always something wrong but......I'm pleased with the result.

 

[sourland]

Strong personality.

 

[Aussie-Chookmum]

This lamp is called Ent.
For some reason my camera, an automatic, sucks the red out of the picture. The lamp is redder than the pictures suggest.
It's come up well. There is always something wrong but......I'm pleased with the result.
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Wow, the back does look like a treeish face doesn't it?

 

[Shadrach]

Fore some reason I've convinced myself I have an nice lamp here somewhere. It has lots of problems that in other cases would mean I would scrap it or completely reshape it if possible.
With Ent, the lamp above it didn't really matter if edges were straight or clean. The nature of the lamp back and sides gave plenty of scope for adjustment.
This lamp isn't like that. It needs to be right to look right. Part of the design for the lamp for example is the gouge running from top to bottom. The gouge has a wide radius at the top than it does at the bottom and this is deliberate. In order to show this, the edges and sides need to be perpendicular to the base, other wise one might think this taper was an accident.
Given the lamp is to stay plain as in undecorated the overall shape becomes very important.
I make the vast majority of my lamps with separate bases. It does involve a lot more work.
I could for example just scribe a line where the base was supposed to join the lamp body and pretend.
I've seen it done on other sculptures and products and to my eyes it looks, well, cheap.
The bases often end up being a lot of work. For this lamp the base is cut off the bottom of the same piece of wood the lamp body is made of so the grain direction matches and the colour should be close as well.

knew there were some cracks in the base but before sanding they didn't look very serious and could be filled with wood dust and adhesive. Last night I leaned differently after I had sanded the base a bit.
You can see one of the cracks and it goes right across the piece. Worse still, it does much the same underneath.
I gave it the blunt chisel test by placing the chisel in the crack and hitting it with a hammer.
If the base splits then the problem is solved and the piece is scrap; if it doesn't split then you're in trouble because you have to start thinking about how to rescue it.
The easiest option is of course to find a new piece of wood for the base. I don't have anything suitable. I cut the closest I had and it just looked wrong.

Where you can see the slots were surface cracks and on a decorated lamp I would fill such cracks with slate paste. I can't really do that on this lamp. It would just look wrong. So, I've turned the cracks into a feature and cut slots which have encompassed the cracks.

There's a problem though. The corner has broken away and the crack on the side with the slots in extends around the corner but horizontally with a chip in it what's more.

Looking at the lamp on the base I think I've got away with the slots. They need tidying up but to my eyes they look like they work.

Blemishes such as can be seen on the body and on the right of the base are to me acceptable. Wood does this stuff like knots; they happen. As long as they are clean I find them acceptable.

There is this rather annoying crack on the other side which I may just fill. If it was at the same angle as the right hand corner I might consider a slot. I'm thinking maybe a wide enough slot will give the angle but....

 

[bruceha2000]

Those cracks are a real PITA on this base! But somehow it will look just fine when you get done with it, you have "the eye".

 

[MaryJanet]

Those cracks are a real PITA on this base! But somehow it will look just fine when you get done with it, you have "the eye".

That's what I was thinking too.

 

[Shadrach]

This lamp is called Soft Hugo.
There is a truly incredible sculptor in the village called Hugo who works with stone.
His work will probably become famous some time after he dies.

For me this is art. It's probably the best single lamp I've made. Whether others like the style is a different matter.
Strange though it may seem, getting the lines one wants vertical and those one wants at a particular angle is pretty difficult by hand. This lamp has three surfaces that need to be parallel to each other; the lamp base, the top of the base and the bottom of the base. Even fractions of a millimeter out show up as obvious error at the top of the lamp. The three surfaces also need to be flat.
In the second picture the edge shown needs a taper from top to bottom because the gouge running down the lamp has a different radius at the top and bottom. This is best shown in picture 7.

While there are wood defects, the construction is about right. That's what I'm after with this type of lamp.
The lamp does have a deeper colour than the pictures show; camera washing out the colour again.
I'm very pleased with it as you can probably tell.

 

[Aussie-Chookmum]

This lamp is called Soft Hugo.
There is a truly incredible sculptor in the village called Hugo who works with stone.
His work will probably become famous some time after he dies.

For me this is art. It's probably the best single lamp I've made. Whether others like the style is a different matter.
Strange though it may seem, getting the lines one wants vertical and those one wants at a particular angle is pretty difficult by hand. This lamp has three surfaces that need to be parallel to each other; the lamp base, the top of the base and the bottom of the base. Even fractions of a millimeter out show up as obvious error at the top of the lamp. The three surfaces also need to be flat.
In the second picture the edge shown needs a taper from top to bottom because the gouge running down the lamp has a different radius at the top and bottom. This is best shown in picture 7.

While there are wood defects, the construction is about right. That's what I'm after with this type of lamp.
The lamp does have a deeper colour than the pictures show; camera washing out the colour again.
I'm very pleased with it as you can probably tell.


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The light and shadow play on it is very striking and crisp Shad. This lamp has presence

 

[Shadrach]

This is the lamp I made for By Bob. I had originally thought to make a lamp with Maleficient's head engraved into the wood. The problem was at this kind of scale and given its profile only there was insufficient detail to make the head look any different from any other chickens head. Add to that her beard and the times I tried just produced a blob with a possible beak.
I asked Bob if he had a preferred style and he pointed out a lamp from one of the fair pictures.
What I made needed to be reasonably light, not overly complex due to cost (No, it wasn't a gift. He very kindly commissioned the lamp) and I thought, something Italian looking.
It is quite a simple lamp but it has lots of touch factor and for a simple lamp, I was rather pleased with the result.
Like a lot of my lamps, you need to touch them and see them from many angles to get a proper idea of what they are like.

 

[bruceha2000]

I think @BY Bob got quite a nice lamp!