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[elizilla]

I love how Amazon can find things that I don't want to buy, not even a little bit, but which I get a huge kick out of seeing in their catalog. Check this out:



https://www.amazon.com/Makernier-Vintage-Tiffany-Chandelier-Inverted/dp/B00VYVFJK0

Is that awesome or what? I can't imagine living with it, but I'd love to see it. If I saw it in Las Vegas, it would vastly improve my feelings about being sent to work conferences out there.

I have now clicked links to look at it several times. I hope Amazon keeps putting it in my recommendations.

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[also-huey.livejournal.com]

My grandfather started teaching me how to make stained glass windows when I was about ten years old. When they sold the house, one of my cousins claimed the diamond router and all the leftover supplies before I got there - but aside from the diamond router, it's all pretty much shit I'd need to buy more of anyway, so I'm not too bent out of shape about it.

This last weekend, we went out for brunch at a new place, and discovered a stained glass store across the street. They were closed (sadly) but had the windows covered with work, so I could point out to The Girl the differences between "this piece is trivially simple and I could teach you how to make it in an afternoon" vs. "this is incredibly difficult, and I'm certain I would fuck up a couple pieces of glass before I got these cuts right" and "this is remarkably cool and I've never seen anything quite like it before".

This is both of those last two. There's two things that are technically difficult - cutting inside curves (glass doesn't want to break in inside curves, it wants to break in straight lines) and cutting, fitting, and soldering the sharply three-dimensional bits. The slow curve of the normal lamp part at the bottom is harder than a flat window piece, but the tight radius of the parrot-heads - I'd have to build multiple molds to hold the pieces while soldering, and each of those molds would have to be successively smaller and designed to be able to pull them out of the remaining piece, until you got to the last bits that'd be like bent popsicle sticks holding the glass up in the hole where the light goes.

To sum up: it's not only very pretty to look at, but it's also an epic pain in the ass to build.

Usually, when I see what people price their pieces at, I'm appalled in one direction or the other. I've seen $200 pieces selling for $1000, and I've got three really nice $200 pieces here in the house, all of which were bought for between $5 and $25. I once bought an attractive Tiffany reproduction desk lamp for $15, after examining it and determining that I can't even buy the materials to make the damn thing for less than $50. This piece? To me, this is a steal at $850, and if I had a room it'd go in and a spare $850, I'd get that in an instant.

[elizilla]

$850 is tough, but a room it would go in is much tougher. It would need a huge room, with very high ceilings, and figuring out the rest of the decor would be tough. Unless you just want to put it into a jumble of curiosities, and frankly I prefer not to collect piles of misc objects; I like to keep things more spartan and open. Even when a misc object is as cool as this.

I currently own a tiffany peacock lamp. It is about 8" tall, a squat peacock with a fat belly and fan tail. The colors are great and I love it. It is next the the bed and I turn it on at night while I am getting ready to go to bed. It's brighter than a nightlight, but not bright enough to read by. It is comfortable and beautiful. Amazon has lamps with individual parrots like these, that would serve similarly, but I only have one bed, and I am happy with my peacock light.