My first lampshade form:
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My 24” hanging peacock lamp |
At the time that I made my first lampshade form, I had only worked with the Worden system, so, when I thought about how I wanted to make my form, knowledge of the Odyssey system played no part.
- Since I was going to be creating my own pattern, Worden’s use of a paper pattern attached to the form had a certain attraction.
- Worden’s use of pins to hold things in place also made sense to me. I wanted my form to be made of a material that could have pins stuck into it.
- Worden (and Odyssey too had I known at the time) puts the pattern and glass on the outside of the form. My first lampshade form was to be for a lampshade that was wide and flat. I decided that I wanted to put the pattern and glass on the inside of the bowl. This offers the following advantages:
- Gravity becomes my friend. If I start at the center and work toward the outer edges, gravity works to hold the pieces in place. This doesn’t completely eliminate the use of pins but it definitely reduces the need.
- A problem with working on the outside of the bowl is that each piece of glass wants to rock. The center of each piece makes contact with the form but the edges are lifted. Stabilizing each piece and getting the best possible alignment where the pieces meet can be difficult. Working on the inside of the bowl, all of the edges touch or come very close to touching the form. It’s the center of each piece that is farthest from the form. For the most part, the glass pieces self-stabilize and self align.
- I wanted to work with a paper pattern
- on the inside of the bowl.
- and the bowl needed to be made of a material that I could stick pins into.
Making my mold:
I had recently watched one of the home improvement programs
where they had been restoring the plaster moldings in an old Southern
mansion. To do this, they had created a
wood or metal profile that they would drag through the wet plaster of paris
until they achieved the desired profile.Wood profile on plaster mold |
My plan was to create a wood profile that I could turn
around a fixed point at the center of the mold. I could probably describe this all day and
not make it any clearer. The following
is a photo of a wood profile sitting on a plaster form.
I glued a large chunk of Styrofoam down to a piece of
plywood. After cutting it to the
appropriate height I set a disk of wood into the center of the top. A brad, set into this disk, served as my
pivot point. With my wood profile as a
guide, I used a knife to cut away all of the excess Styrofoam. My objective was to have a small (maybe 1/4”)
gap between the Styrofoam and the wood profile when I turned the profile on its
pivot point.
Then came the plaster of paris. Plaster of paris sets in about 30 minutes so
my work time was short. I worked in
small batches, glopping it onto the Styrofoam and then spreading it over the
surface with my wood profile. The
resulting mold was very smooth and exactly the shape that I wanted.
Making my lampshade form:
The papier-mache product that I used for my form was a paper pulp and glue mixture that I found at my local craft store. All I had to do was add water and mix.
My first lampshade form |
Fiberglass underside |
After covering my mold with Saran wrap (so the papier-mache
wouldn’t stick), I spread my papier-mache mixture over the surface of the
mold. I laid it on pretty thick (3/8 –
1/2”) and shaped it so that it would have a flat bottom (so that it would sit
straight on a table).
My form took several days (maybe a week) to
dry. When I discovered that it was less
rigid than I would have liked, I decided to fiberglass the outside while it was
still on the mold.
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