Inspired By TWest

I wanted to share a new project I had made for the Little Red House: Taliesin West-inspired wireless pendent lamps.

I've always loved the design of the clustered tetrahedral shaded lamps (created around 1956 by Taliesin apprentice Richard Carney) and wanted to find a way to bring this type of accent light into my own home. So I did some thinking and designing and came up with a way to make it happen.

The material the shades are made from actual wood veneer laminated to paperboard. This allows it to be scored, folded, and glued like a packaging carton. I had one of my Structural Designer friends design a CAD structure for the shade and the cut the piece out on a CAD table. We then folded it and glued it together to make a three dimensional shade. I made sure to leave a little hole at the tip of each shade so that the string connected to the light could be threaded through.

I then got some remote controlled LED puck lights, attached natural twine to them, strung the shades together and hung them from the ridge post of the house as shown.

I had a triangular piece of steel cut by Chicago artist Randall Kramer for use as a counter balance to keep everything in place as it hangs.

And that's how I made my new set of natural material accent pendant lights that require no electric wiring and can be controlled remotely. I hope Mr. Wright would be proud!

Inspiration image via mylittlehousedesign.com/the rest via PrairieMod