Hanging Lights

I had a reader from the Yahoo Greene and Greene group I belong to request information on an Arts & Crafts style hanging pool table lamp. I built a couple of hanging lamps about 6 years ago for a client and went back and found the photos and drawings. I was just learning CAD then and the drawings are cluttery and crude, but still, (possibly), legible. Click them to enlarge them so you can read em ... Between the drawings and the photos and maybe by making yourself a full size cardboard mockup (which we did at the time ) once you have the parts on hand, you should be able to piece together your own lamp design. The crude steel hangers we made when my son was just starting to fool around with metalworking. As I recall, we had an anvil and maybe a forge, but not much else, including experience ... with some tinkering on site though it all worked out ... I've always wanted to build more of these, but the clients just never appeared ... They take some time and therefore aren't cheap ... Leave a comment if you have a question or send me an email through my website ... I have also added a "greene and greene' category to my blog. I'm not a strict reproductionist of any style, but I do enjoy using some of their elements and influences in my own designs ...

Shows some dimensions and inlay layout though i'm certain they are not totally accurate.

Other early cad versions .. I think the lamp should be roughly a little longer than the spot to spot dimension of the table to get the light over the whole surface.


The finished lamp with the other lamp in the background

Lamp over the table (+/- 30" above it in this instance ... I prefer them a little lower than this client did

Looking up .. commercial brass lamp parts purchased at the local lighting store .. Also not the copper heat shield spaced down an inch from the wood top. The wood top had slots to let the heat escape too .. I think in the end we used flood style bulbs ...

Ceiling support ... a simplified version of the ceiling plate on the light below, secured with round head screws

Our first hanging fixture, actually, coincidentally, over the dining table in a recent post about a table leaf. The lit panels are big leaf maple burl veneer on the outside, attached with 3m Spray 90, to plexiglass panels, held into rabbets with small brads

Looking up into that fixture ... four bulbs, hand blown and cut glass rondells, copper heat shield and slots in the fixture top .. It gives off a very warm funky light with interesting shadows from the rondells..

The whole fixture including the ceiling support and sconces we made in the background


this project was completed just as i was starting to do my own cad drawings. what i have assembled above here is all that i have, but with a little effort and imagination and picture staring, you can probably get a pretty good idea of the overall size of the hanging fixture ... top drawings with the hatched slots shows the cut outs for the heat to escape ... good luck

Matching A Table Leaf

Surprisingly, we've got a lot going on right now ... We're about to start a large entertainment center that has required some intensive design work, we're finishing up a couple of other small projects, doing some repairs , switching from tennis to paddle tennis season, and chopping the last of the firewood for the winter. One of our smaller projects was to make a new leaf for a table we made about 5 years ago ... Our client has two houses and he decided to switch dining tables, moving the larger table to his main house. He bought the table below back when I had piecess in a local gallery and that table had only one leaf. In it's new spot, two leaves would be more useful so he had us duplicate the original leaf. Click the photos to enlarge them ...

The room before the switch

The original table in that room

With the 'new' table ..
When we did this 'house full of furniture' project in 2003, I was just discovering the work of Charles and Henry Greene. While never one to make slavish reproductions, I found their work interesting, challenging and inspiring on many levels. Still do .... So, this particular room has mostly G&G inspired detailing, but surprisingly, when I switched out the tables, the new table did not feel completely out of place ... The hanging lantern over the table is still one of our favorite pieces. The whole room though is in the middle of the house and is IMPOSSIBLE to photgraph effectively. Someday, I might have to call in the professionals ...

Testing the fit and pin locations of the new leaf, seen on the right with the first coat of finish ..

This picture shows the understructure of the table that allows te table to expand to 8' with only a single pedestal ... We've made other central pedestal tables like this using this Hafele hardware and we're always surprised what you can get a way with ... Biggest one so far with a single pedestal opens to almost 10' ...

We did the routing for the original inlay by hand, but Trevor did the new leaf on the cnc ... beautiful tool pathing ...

The burl inlay itself is a series of equal triangles, cut and fitted to lines drawn on the wood below .. Faster than using the cnc ...

He then lined it up with the old leaf, put masking tape on the old leaf to mark the pin centers and drilled for the pins with our old doweling jig ...

It lined up really well and at this point we took it for the prefit ... I've got some detail photos of other furniture in the room and I'll post them later ...

Looking up into the lantern

Arts and Crafts Pool Tables

I posted an attachment photo of a Greene & Green style pool table to a newsgroup forum I belong to (Green & Greene at Yahoo) and the attachment shows up for some members and not for others so I'm posting it here. It's a table by Catskill Furnituremakers from a 2004 or 2005 ad in American Bungalow Magazine (the price is from then) . Coincidentally, we'll be starting an Arts & Crafts, though not Greene & Greene, inspired pool table for a client in Virginia in a couple of weeks and Ill be documenting the building process for that once we get underway. I have also posted some of my other Arts & Crafts inspired pool tables. Other models with different design influences are shown in the 'pool and game tables' section of my website ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

The ad from American Bungalow

We built this table in 2004 and we'll be doing another version of it in a couple weeks ...

Got some walnut for it today ... Actually, I talked to my friend Myron at Irion Lumber Tuesday when I was looking for some 10-12" walnut for the legs and rails and I ended up talking myself into a whole log of walnut. There are about 10 boards in the 18-20" range which I'll use for other projects in the future and the other 10 boards (10-14" wide), (it was a big log), I'll use for the legs and other parts of the table ... Hey! how can pass that up ... I can always refinance the house...

Mahogany and maple burl ... this one had a nice hanging light with it ...

Other pool accessories in vertical grain fir, cherry and oak that went with a table similar to the one shown below. The spectator chair I notice has some vague Greene & Greene references ...

Vertical grain fir in a simple though very pleasant combination of elements .. End grain cherry details and gold abalone sight inlays.
Pool tables are great ... As long as the slate's level and the cushions work well, you can hold it all up with whatever kind of a structure you want ...

Drawing a Greene & Greene Cloud Lift with a CAD Program ...

Since I work many styles besides Greene and Greene I sometimes have to fool around for a minute til I remember how exactly to do this when I have to do it. I'm putting it here for myself and anybody else who wants it ... Enjoy ! Click to enlarge ...

The Tansu Stairs are Done

Well, I was redoing the jobs list on my office bulletin board this morning and the little clipping above was pasted onto the corner of it. I put it there a while back and forgot about it but today, it caught my eye again. So true .... Most every big project takes 'a little longer' than expected and this one was no exception. But, now we're pretty much done. Shipping to Palo Alto has been arranged and all that's left is the shaping of the wall mounted handrail and a little welding on the mounting brackets for it. We had a few 'last details; to work out this week and they are detailed below. There are two other posts to this project .... here ... and here... Great project ....

The finished cabinet ... Click the photos to enlarge them ..

The boys got a little happy as they were about to put together the back cabinets ...

Tricky post moounting details and

tread to riser joinery

Shows the breakdown for shipping

and the skids with wheels we put under the base cabinets

Assembling the back cabinets ... More info on this project here ... and here ...

Tansu Stairs Update

3/20/09 Trevor made some progress this week on the tansu stair cabinet described in the post on 3/9. It's pretty much his baby, with the rest of us brainstorming with him as needed. He's doing a great and careful job on a complex project. The main cabinet is complete now with the face frames and cabinet backs glued on. Yesterday and today he's been working on the templates for the three steel railing sections that Sam is making parts for. He cut some cardboard railing outlines and mdf post prototypes on the cnc to discover minor corrections that need to be made before cutting the real templates and posts on Monday. He also took a little time out this afternoon to do the butterfly inlays on the walnut plank in the foreground of the end of day shot above .... (click to enlarge it) ... On the face frame. rather than do the half laps the old fashioned way with a manual layout and tablesaw dados, he convinced me he could cut them as fast using a combination of the cnc for marking and layout and the tablesaw for halflapping. I think it took him a little longer than usual as it was his first time, but I want to tell you ... that face frame is perfectly square with not one drawer front off 90 degrees. I'm coming around to his way of thinking ....

Checking the rail to wall and mocked up ceiling fit

Checking the post notch and rail taper angles

Some of the drawer parts with some of the risers and treads stickered in thebackground ... Lots o pieces.

Small two man brainstorm session

The Tansu Stair Project

besides the post below, there are several other blog posts about these stairs. here is a link to the final one and you can work back to this post from that one ... great project !!!

3/9 ... Had it all together around 1:00 today. It's all disassembled now and the cabinet interiors are being shellacked and waxed ....

Proposed railing design including second floor landing

The case taking shape today 3/6/09

The cad drawing showing the three subcases seperated by color

About 20 years ago I made the tansu style stair cabinet above for clients who were remodeling a house up the road in Danby, Vermont. Last spring, I made another tansu style cabinet for a New York City entryway and one way or another, last summer a gentleman from California found my pictures on the internet and contacted me regarding a stairway project he had in mind. We went back and forth for a while, and now, they're underway on construction of the addition to his house and we have started the stair cabinet. Unfortunately, my contract doesn't call for me to install so I'll just wave goodbye to it, and, maybe, by then, it will be spring here and I won't be wishing I was in sunny CA.. It killed me back in January to get pictures of carpenters in shorts and sunscreen while it was zero or so here. Anyway .... More to follow .... This'll be a long one ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Last summer's tansu cabinet in walnut

A sketch for the cabinet we're working on made by laying trace over the photo in the top left corner in the collage below

Photos from the client (sent in January) with my photoshopped sketching of the railings etc.