The Chevron

Another outside of your comfort zone piece for Empty Lamps. Large dimensions to suit scale of the house, timber & black to match its surrounding elements. This piece sits high above an outdoor entertaining area, centre of a huge 6m cathedral style ceiling. Designed & built for an Oj Pippen custom build in Bridgeman Downs, Brisbane.

Rings Of Saturn

A very different and adventurous couple of pieces began early this year. Venturing into foreign ground with the two pieces dubbed, “Rings of Saturn”.

First off I worked out how small of an angle I could get to try and start the rings as circular as possible. I started with 18 sides but it wasn’t enough so next was 24 sides at an angle of 15’/7.5' degrees per mitre. Due to the fact I only have a dropsaw to use it quickly turned out that these angles weren’t working out perfectly. Many angles were re-cut to make the shape work. A slightly frustrating process when you have 24 pieces to cut to make each ring.

One of the most rewarding and enjoyable tasks I find is sanding. Taking the piece from rough sides and edges to completely smooth and rounded rings is satisfying. I found i really liked the shaping of these pieces with the random orbital sander and I’m looking to integrate it into more of my future pieces.

The house for which these lights are designed is going to be something else and so the lights had to be something else as well. The brief was, brief. Basically ‘something you can’t buy in a shop, one off’. I put pen to paper and played around with an idea I had in my head but it wasn’t quite custom enough. I tried again straight away and came up with a random idea of rings inside rings. My drawing probably didn’t end up as the design used but it made me build 4 rings of which I could experiment with. As there are two different stairwells in this house I decided one needed to be long to fill the long wall it is displayed against. The other round, to sit in the middle of a two storey, very open vertical stairwell.

Installed these pieces look better than I could have imagined. The longer piece gets a great view through it as you walk down the hallway from the blair lane end of “Belvedere”. The round lights sits subtly at the top of a vertical stairwell surrounded by white walls and glass windows allowing beautiful natural light into the space and letting the timbers grains stand out.

With the two pieces being very fragile in assembly I did have to re join rings to rings a few times when I came unstuck attempting to move parts on my own or being a bit complacent. All learning points I will be weary of in the future. Thankfully when the time came to install I had many hands around to assist in a safe and smooth process.

Installed at “Belvedere” house, built by Zephyr Industries. This home took home the award for “National Alterations/Additions Award Over $1million.

https://zephyrindustries.com.au/belvedere/

Totem

Spawning of component shapes from the years earlier designs a simpler design comes together. Made from soft pine and covered with a matte white wash look. “Totem” is a delicate pendant light built for a space surrounded by glass and white. Aiming to blend in with the character of the 2019 modern home from Zephyr Industries. It sits atop the stairwell to the master suite.

Timber Stair Feature

Designed with my sister this project was exciting and I thought it would be quite an interesting experiment. It spent a while in the pipeline before I got the opportunity to start on it. We were in the process of expanding and digging out at the workshop so it was perfect timing to move the dropsaw away while the workshop was out of action. It turned out a lot more demanding than I had imagined, basically measuring and making up as I went along. I found myself sitting back wondering how I was going to do the next part, or waking up on a sunday morning figuring out in my head how I was going to do the shelf. Definitely a test of patience.