Table Lamps: Mission, Western, Craftsman, Stickley, F.L. Wright, Prairie, Arts & Crafts Styles

Wonderful lamps, Mark. I can imagine the atmosphere in the dark room with just the lamp lights turned on.. that must be very relaxing.

I like the copper artwork as well since it compliments the wooden pieces nicely.

Thanks for sharing the story.. hope you will sell those remaining four lamps soon after the Western Design Conference Show ;)

-- Martin, http://lumberjocks.com | My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin_Sojka/1357216976

Very nice! Like martin said, I’ll bet the atmosphere in a room with this lamp is perfect. Great used of the various media.

Hey Martin & Dennis:
thanks for helping me deal with the pain I described in my description of the lamps. Your comments are encouraging. Sitting in the living room of this customer, sorrounded by more than 3000 hours of my labor, lit only by the soft orange glow of two of my table lamps is a nice feeling. Then, as if my trance is broken by a bucket of water, I realize that I got to get home and back to work, as another bill is due. LOL, COL.

thanks for your comforting,
Mark DeCou (P)
www.decoustudio.comt

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flinthill's Artisan

Mark Very nice lamps. Dusty keeps saying that he has about 3 hours in his and yours took 60 hours. Maybe Dusty will give a training class to us.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Yes, can glass be that much quicker to work than copper? More forgiving, certainly not.

Beautiful lamps just the same.

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Vincent Van Gogh

The lamps I build are very simple compared to Marks.

Mine are set up for production. That is, I made a jig so I could build a lot of them at once.

Marks are each a piece of Art.

Mine are merely a pieces of wood, assembled to function as a lamp.

The lamp that takes me about 3hours to rough out is small lamp. What I didn’t tell you is it took me two weeks to figured out the compound angles and jigs. The larger lamp took a lot longer to build if you recall.

-- Dusty

These are really outstanding.

-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov

Hey Karson, I missed this question back in March for some reason:

I don’t know why there is such a large time difference between my lamps and Dusty’s. I have several hours in just wiring up the lamp. I put a touch dimmer, and a small switch in the base, a night light in the bottom section, and two lights under the shade. Fitting my big XL hands inside the base is a real chore. Also, wiring it so that the wiring doesn’t show in the base with the night light on takes some time and care. The next time I do lamps, I will make a removable top, or split the base into two pieces so I can do the wiring and mica installation.

The copper silouettes take about 5-6 hours per shade to do the artwork, cut out the shape, file and sand the edge and surface, and then hammer into a textured 3-d shape.

Cutting and inserting the Mica, using silicone to glue it in place took some time, maybe 2 hours per lamp.

The frame of the shade is pretty complicated with the angles, and cutting out all of the little pieces, gluing them together, doing the small rabbet that holds the mica sheets, making the pyramid top with heat vent holes, and such all took me awhile. On the lamps where I used the small lap joint slats on the side of the base is a time consuming thing to cut and fit together.

Dusty’s work is top notch, so I know the difference has nothing to do with quality. Most likely, the reason is that I just work slow. Even when I try to work fast, or cut some corners, I just can’t seem to do it. It is a blessing and a curse in the work I do.

What I continue to learn at shows is that my work is too high priced, and too detailed for most people’s needs. People seem to respect my work, but don’t have the cash to spend what it takes me to do it. I need to decide which direction to go with my work; either to continue looking for a market for my detailed, time consuming work, or develop a line of work that I can do faster and sell at a lower price. I can’t see that I can do both. I can’t do the detail fast, and I can’t cut the labor costs without outsourcing to lower priced labor. It’s a challenge for sure to figure out what to do. I have for several years looked for a niche of customers where I could sell my best, most creative, most detailed work, which is what I want to spend my time on.

I wish I could do these lamps in 3 hours each, I could sell a lot of these lamps then. They show well wherever I have shown them, but the price seems to quiet most people that are interested. I showed them at the Western Design Conference in 2006, and another guy there showing lamps was sort of upset that I didn’t sell them for more money. He said that he sells his lamps for $1500 each, and that at the price I was selling mine, I was under selling them. I told him that I needed the money badly, and just wanted to sell them. I did sell one of the three I had at that show, to a nice family in Pennsylvania. The other two came home with me.

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flinthill's Artisan

Mark,

The lamps are absolutely beautiful. I bet one would look great on a Thorsen Side Table.

-- Fred Childs, Pasadena, CA - - - Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Thanks Fred:

Thanks, I agree with you, they would look good on a Thorsen Table. It could be said that they even look good on a “DeCou Side Table”. ha!

This is the End Table in it’s home environment, that I have posted as project:http://lumberjocks.com/projects/44

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flinthill's Artisan

Where’s the Big Screen? I don’t care what Karson says I think you did a great job Mark.
(Just kidding Karson) And yes Mark, you did do a great job on this lamp. The shade is awsome. Great Woodworking art!

-- Carpe Lignum - Seize The Wood,

PanamaJack: It is funny you mention the “big screen.”

This customer has a projection t.v., and the 8’ wide screen is directly the right of the Morris Chair on the right side of the photo. Makes watching videos like sitting at a theatre, only more comfortable!

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flinthill's Artisan

Hay Panamajack:

I wasn’t giving Mark a hard time, I was just asking Dusty to give us a training class on making lamps.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

I’m glad this project came back around in Pulse or I’d have missed it. That’s just great!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

Beautiful lamps Mark. I just love the Mission style.

-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28

I just saw these for the 1st time thanks to pulse. Wow! Amazing Mark…..beautiful pieces of art that just happen to be lamps.

-- Bob, Carver Massachusetts, Sawdust Maker http://www.capecodbaychallenge.org

I stumbled across a photo I took of the illuminated Kansas Flinthills farm scene with a tree that I did for one of the lamps. I added it in the project story.

It is reminiscent, and inspired from the famous impressionistic Kansas artist that my Grandfather was friends with, named Birger Sandzen. I took Mr. Sandzen’s styling of wind swept trees and Kansas prairie scenery and adapted it to hammered copper silouette, back light, artwork.

thanks,
Mark

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flinthill's Artisan

Mark,

You make beautiful work. I’m enjoying all of your projects. Do you recall where you purchased the mica for the shades?

-- The answer to life, the universe and everything is .........42!

Mark,
these are great lamps. I’ve made a few with copper framed shades and mica, but I’ve got some jigs to make up so I can make the wooden ones. If you don’t let them get to heavy looking, I think they look better and are sturdier.

-- Tim -- http://tmuli.com

wow those are such beautiful lamps.

This really is fantastic work you are doing.

-- ~ www.darrylmasterson.com ~ www.woodworkingdungeon.blogspot.com ~