Lamp #30

Maple wood and homemade fiberglass with found wooden sphere as pull chain pendant.

The design was inspired by this lamp by Jean Trenchant.

In between making this lamp and the one before it, I ran out of my stock of old aviation fiberglass which I found in an alley in 2021. I tried searching for similar flat sheets of fiberglass and didn’t find anything that looked as good. And so I resolved to making the fiberglass myself.

I tried making my own fiberglass before with polyester resin and hated using the toxic stuff. It gave me headaches even when I was using it outside with a respirator on. And I could never get the mixing ratios right. I tried using West Systems epoxy-based resin instead and found it much easier to work with and a lot less toxic to be around. It took many attempts to produce a fiberglass sheet that I was pleased with. I ended up using a layer of newsprint paper to give the fiberglass more light diffusion and a good warm color.