My lamps have been a product idea that I have been mulling for many years. I love table lamps. I love how a well-designed lamp can set the tone for an entire room.
My experience an electrician has given me opportunities to become skilled in a range of ancillary crafts like plumbing and general construction. Those skills are brought together when designing and building my lamps using hardwood bases and copper pipe stems.
My lamp bases are always made from very special pieces of wood with their own story. Some are turned from Sycamore trees that once grew within a stones throw from the old Jameson Distillery in Smithfield, right in the heart of Dublin City. These trees have a lifespan of about 150 years and are likely to have witnessed some of Dublin’s most important historic events like the 1916 rising, the war of independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State. It was pure luck that I was passing on the day that these magnificent trees were being removed, convincing the owners to part with some fine pieces.
Another range of lamps bases are made from White Oak that came from a railway sleeper I acquired from a farmer in Edenderry, County Offaly. The sleeper was used for decades as a mantle piece over an open fire that warmed an old rural cottage. Before that, it supported the railway line on the old Midland Great Western Railway from 1877 right up to the closure of the line and removal of the tracks in 1963.