My first lampshade form:

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.

1. 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. 
2. 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.
3. 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.

So there were my requirements: 

• 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.

After much consideration, I decided that that my lampshade form would be made of papier-mache. If you’ve ever worked with papier-mache, you know that you need some sort of mold to use to shape the papier-mache.  If I had been a master on the wood lathe, I might have created that mold on the lathe.  Of course, if I was a master on the wood lathe, I might have just turned my lampshade form (ala Tiffany) and been done with it.  As it was, I decided to use plaster of paris.  Since that would be a large, heavy, expensive chunk of plaster of paris, I actually decided to make my mold out of Styrofoam and then put a plaster of paris surface on it.

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.