The Catherine Lamps

Why make only one lamp when you can make four instead? Because it’s a huge pain in the butt. I probably should have known this when I first came up with the idea, but then again, ‘bad decisions’ are kind of my wheelhouse. Lets rewind a little, a friend (we’ll call her ‘Helga’) texted me a picture of (what I later found out was) a sceptic tank aerator system air compressor that she found on the curb, and asked if I wanted her to grab it. I almost never say ‘no’ to trash, so I responded with an enthusiastic “sure.” After breaking it down and clearing out all of the spider carcasses/roach eggs, I was left with four aluminum compression cylinders/pistons and a bunch of brass air fittings. I thought to myself, “these would be really cool to fit a bottle into to make some lamps” and then promptly shoved everything to the side and did something else. Fast-forward nine months and I’m standing at my welding table with an empty tequila bottle that another friend had given us, thinking it would make a really cool lamp, and looking around at parts that I could use to flesh it out. Thats when I remembered the compressor cylinders, and the idea for one lamp was set. Problem was, I had four of those cylinders, and I was going to use all of them for lamps eventually anyway right? So why not just make four matching lamps right out of the gate? (for the correct answer, see above) What makes ‘Four’ so much more of a pain than ‘One’? Well, when you mostly make stuff out of junk, parts mostly don’t come in fours, and once you do have four of mostly matching sets, you get to degrease/polish/fit everything. The result is that, as soon as you’re ‘done’ doing something, you get to do it again three more times. To break up the monotony I elected to use a different style of bottle for each of the lamps. All in all I’m happy with these little lamps, and it is nice to see an idea that is solid enough that it can be repeated successfully, even when I hope never to repeat-repeat-repeat-repeat it again. Anyway, I hope you like them, and thanks again Kate.

(Note, only the second lamp shown in the series is still available)