This is, to date, my most ambitious lamp project. It's a piece from my first Lichtenberg Series. This lamp is a bit different than the other eight in that run, in that its orientation is horizontal (as you can see in the pictures). The narrow burn—which gives the lamp a truly unique texture—runs horizontally across the base. As such, when I first saw how it turned out, my thoughts ran to "lightning across the desert." Thus inspired, the lamp's distressed coloring fades sequentially from black to navy blue to hunter green to a muted gray. The "lightning strike," was filled/painted with an oil-based metallic silver paint; as such, the strike "lightens" the darkened sky. As the books stacked next to the lamp in the photos suggest, it's impossible for me to think of lightning and not think of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The quote below was taken from All the Pretty Horses: 

“By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.” * 

The base measurements for this lamp are: 1.5 inches (D),  12 inches (W), and 9.25 inches (L). The edges were routered with a Classical bit; it was finished with a very light Summer Oak stain and then three coats of clear shellac.

The lamp's upright fixtures are 1/2 inch black malleable iron, which I then finished with a metallic black spray-paint; they measure 12 inches in height and the 4 inch Edison bulb (amber, with a spiral filament) is included in the price (for a total upright height of 16 inches).

The lamp's On/Off switch is a classical key and the black braided cloth extension chord measures 5 feet from the lamp's base. 

If you have any questions at all about this particular piece, please do not hesitate to contact me through the CONTACT link in the navigation bar. 

* The two stones in the photographs are also related to my love of McCarthy. Contact me if you're interested in hearing of their origins.