ArtShades

Spring Garden display

A quick snapshot of part of my stand at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show which runs through until Sunday at 5pm.  The weekend weather for Malvern looks good, so hope to see you there.

Malvern Spring Gardening Show 10-13 May 2012

Let's hope the weather improves for next week's Malvern Spring Gardening Show - our first show of the year.  Come and visit the Worcestershire Guild of Designer Craftsmen in the Wye Hall.

50cm drum map shades

Sometimes sourcing suitable maps takes almost as long as making the shade itself.  The huge circumference of 50cm diameter drum shades requires the joining of three maps from the OS one-inch maps series (the ones I usually use) or two maps from the Pathfinder 4cm to 1km series. 

The latter have paper covers which makes them rather flimsy and as I've discovered many old book shops don't bother to stock them. When you do eventually find the ones you're looking for the condition is not always good enough.  With this shade, having at last found the two consecutive maps I needed, I discovered one had been buckled when used in the rain by its previous owner.  I struggled to smooth it, before being forced to begin the search for a replacement. 

My customer has been very patient, I am pleased with the result, but have to admit this is one commission I will be happy to wave goodbye to.

 

Herefordshire Society Magazine Spring/Summer 2012

One of my lamps is featured in the current issue of Herefordshire Society magazine as part of a double page spread on lighting.

This issue also features an article on artist blacksmith Jenny Pickford which pictures her fabulous giant agapanthus sculpture and another on award-winning Malvern artists David Prentice and Dinah Prentice.

You can view the complete issue here.

Design Experiments

I started the day with my head full of ideas for new lampshades.  Three different ideas were brewing and I wanted to try them all, at once.

The first involved silhouettes of glass vessels so I played around with the camera for a while, but couldn't quite decide on a design before being distracted by thoughts of a new technique.

  

So I played with dyes and paints, parchment and maps before getting disheartened when I couldn't translate the design in my sketchbook into stitch.  My mind was wandering again.

 

My final idea was prompted quite simply by the two wooden birds sitting on my desk since yesterday when they arrived in the post. 

I sketched a few pairs of birds, their tails reminiscent of my seed-head design, remembered my robin Christmas cards

   

and decided I'd try a pair of love birds from appliqued map.

They look rather flighty in comparison to their wooden friends, 

but I think they will work well as a lampshade.

My workspace is now in chaos!