These pair of lamps were designed and constructed as a tribute to the ingenuity of one particular spider. In one of those National Geographic specials, a really unique spider was featured. The spider would spin a web over an insect pathway. It then would hang upside down from its rear six legs. The two front legs, through an evolutionary progression, had grown longer than the other six. The spider would then spin a smaller web between the two front legs. When prey would cross the pathway the spider would net or kind of lasso the prey, tie them up in the larger web, spin another web between the front legs and look for more eats. Tool making at its’ finest.
The glass is a deep red and black catspaw opalescent manufactured by a German company called Fisher. The opal glass is no longer available. Factories vs. The Black Forest. The Forest won. The assembly technique is the copper foil method. The two legs hanging underneath the lamp are on custom made universal joints. They move and swing around. The two hanging spider legs and the six legs comprising the structure of the lamp were made from cast polished brass. There are brass webs with brass insects, moths, butterflies, and dragonflies, which hang from the inside of the lamp. Tiffany Studios originally made the lamps. I took the basic form and altered it. Each lamp contains 312 pieces of glass. Each piece of glass was hand cut, the outer edges were then ground smooth forming a special angle. After being ground, each piece was then thoroughly cleaned. Finally they were all wrapped with a copper foil tape and burnished smooth with a wooden fid. Lamps take many hours of dedicated patience. At the base, they measure 13 inches across. From the base to the top of the lamps, measures 7 inches. From the base of the lamps to the bottom of the legs, measures 6 inches.