Easy To Make Arts And Crafts Lamps And Shades

How to turn inexpensive materials into attractive, functional objects — from a dining room dome to an electric candle sconce.

Popular 1911 manual offers complete designs and instructions for making 18 authentic Mission lighting fixtures: chandeliers, reading lamps, droplights, desk lamps, dome fixtures, more. Complete, easy-to-follow instructions with measurements, illustrated with over 75 working drawings, diagrams and figures. No elaborate tools required. Minimal outlay for materials and equipment.

Illustrated instructions for making twelve simple wooden toys including a freight train, cargo ship, helicopter, and others.

Over 250 photographs and measured drawings for over 80 classic Shaker designs: cradle, dry sink, trestle table, lap desk, rocking chair, many more. 262 halftones. 140 black-and-white line illustrations.

Few growing up in the aftermath of World War II will ever forget the horrifying reports that Nazi concentration camp doctors had removed the skin of prisoners to makes common, everyday lampshades. In The Lampshade, bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of one of these awful objects, and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning, of what can only be described as an icon of terror. Jacobson’s mind-bending historical, moral, and philosophical journey into the recent past and his own soul begins in Hurricane Katrina–ravaged New Orleans. It is only months after the storm, with America’s most romantic city still in tatters, when Skip Henderson, an old friend of Jacobson’s, purchases an item at a rummage sale: a very strange looking and oddly textured lampshade. When he asks what it’s made of, the seller, a man covered with jailhouse tattoos, replies, “That’s made from the skin of Jews.” The price: $35. A few days later, Henderson sends the lampshade to Jacobson, saying, “You’re the journalist, you find out what it is.” The lampshade couldn’t possibly be real, could it? But it is. DNA analysis proves it. This revelation sends Jacobson halfway around the world, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where the lampshades were supposedly made on the order of the infamous “Bitch of Buchenwald,” Ilse Koch. From the time he grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, Jacobson has heard stories about the human skin lampshade and knew it to be the ultimate symbol of Nazi cruelty. Now he has one of these things in his house with a DNA report to prove it, and almost everything he finds out about it is contradictory, mysterious, shot through with legend and specious information. Through interviews with forensic experts, famous Holocaust scholars (and deniers), Buchenwald survivors and liberators, and New Orleans thieves and cops, Jacobson gradually comes to see the lampshade as a ghostly illuminator of his own existential status as a Jew, and to understand exactly what that means in the context of human responsibility. One question looms as his search goes on: what to do with the lampshade—this unsettling thing that used to be someone? It is a difficult dilemma to be sure, but far from the last one, since once a lampshade of human skin enters your life, it is very, very hard to forget.

Fifteenth-century handbook, written by a working artist of the day, reveals techniques of the masters in drawing, oil painting, frescoes, panel painting, gilding, casting, more. Direct link to artists of Middle Ages.

Discover how easy it is to enhance your rooms with this complete introduction to the art of making lampshades. Many creative project ideas are presented in this illuminating book. You will learn how to cover, line and trim an existing lampshade, as well as create your own distinctive lamps and shades in a variety of stunning styles. Clear, concise, and easy to follow instructions and illustrations will make it easy.

From the basics of wiring a lamp through fitting a shade, learn how to transform virtually any object into a unique source of light. Use simple raw materials, or salvage those old neglected lamps with a modern makeover. Plus tips for choosing the perfect shade, and the pros/cons of various light bulbs. "Lamps that will attract attention even when the light is off."--"Good Housekeeping."