Picture Lamp: Hexagons-in-Law

Brass, glass, pictured & personalized hexagonal lamp.

My in-laws were re-furbishing their house in Mumbai, so lots of so called old home scrap was bestowed upon me. One thing I particularly loved was this pair of hexagonal-brass pendant light. They were simple and beautiful and blackened too. So my thought was to give them back

something made from their old stuff, give it a twist and gift it back to them, with the added wowness, of course.

We dismantled the pendant light, decided to just use the hexagonal bulb casing and make it as a table lamp. First thing to do was to make the metal nice and shiny; good old ‘brasso’ to the rescue. So from black, the metal polished into a nice dark, rustic, goldenish hue.

In order to make it personal, we took 3 of my in-laws lovely pictures, sized them to fit the glass panels of the lamp, did some photoshop enhancements and muted the colors to sepia mode. These pictures were printed on transparent sticker papers and glued on the glass panels. The idea was to have alternate panels having pictures. All six sides bearing pictures would have become a little too chaotic I feel. So on the other set of alternate panels, we put hexagonal see-through designs. The alternate picture & only design panels just gave a really nice balance to the whole look.

As for the bulb-fitting, we made a wooden base, cut to the same shape & size as the hexagonal base. Put a diffused bulb in the center of the wooden base, and wired it up.

The lamp was ready and good to be wrapped and gifted. It looked quite elegant and especially with the lights on: the hexagonal-design shadows flickering on the wall and my in-laws pictures glowing from behind. Together it all gave wonderful and subtle feelings of warmth and beauty.

Gladly, my in-laws loved their gift. Especially they were really fascinated with the transformation of their own old lamp into a new avatar all together.

As they always say – “Old is gold”; rather “Old is brass” in this case at least.