Here is my new lamp with ammonites. If you will scroll down to the older posts, you will find a detail story about my "Light in the Coils" project. This particular lamp was made with 46 ammonites (each worked individually) and it's size is 4.5-by-9-by12 inches. The base is slightly wider and longer and made out of Butternut wood.
Sometimes I like to mix new materials with stained glass. Few years ago I got a handful of ammonites. It happens sometimes that you get something and only after that you have actual idea what you want to do with that. Ammonites were so pretty and definitely had a potential for something. I started to work with them, cleaned their back side and saw how light goes through segments. The idea came to expose a full spiral and make a lamp with that.
Calcite is very soft mineral and it is easy to destroy it by heat that can be a big problem when you try to solder pieces together. Because of that many Geologists and Gemologists doomed my idea to use ammonites with stained glass. I kept trying and faced few more problems soon; it is not enough to create a thin slice out of ammonite, you need to grind it until spiral is fully exposed. 
I usually used inner part (sliced) part of ammonites to be outside. What you see on this picture is how it looks under its shell. The idea came to clean shell away and see if it is possible to use this side out. The texture would make it even prettier than sliced side. In the same moment I didn't want to abandon sliced side too. The new lamp should be able to display both sides of ammonites. This is how the idea of my 4-in-1 lamp was born.
Here is a group of lamps that were created in collaboration with Alyssa. The shade is made of strings of glass that were fused together and slumped. It is free form, but associates with sea somehow. Bases were made out of different wood each piece was selected individually for each shade. Some of them just continue the flow of the shade, some were carved with certain design like the one with sea shells.
This work was designed in the same style as the "Midnight Witch" merging beauty of the image into beauty of the material. I like to use Baroque glass as the background, it only should be cut in such manner that would let it to keep it's flow uninterrupted. This oval panel is 24-by-18 inches. It has loops for chains and can be hanged anywhere.
One of my favorite designs where I tried to put together beauty of woman and freedom of movement all enhanced by carefully selected glass. This panel was a pleasant challenge to make, saving at that uninterrupted flow in glass that makes background. Panel is only 24-by-24 inches but it is perfectly right size for it.
One time I found this old lamp base that was made out of brass pot that was even older. Short research found that this pot was made sometime at the end of 19 century by the company in Switzerland that was (and still is) in business since early 1600s. It has beautiful patina and I wanted my lamp to look like something mysterious is brewing inside of this pot. With this in mind, I designed the shade using glass that was resembling Northern Lights. As the result, shade and base are beautifully complimenting each other.
