G Lee - Project 1 MakerCase Lamp

Concept:

The stress of college has made me start researching pigeons again. Pigeons are not always very highly regarded animals and tend to be treated rather poorly. Despite that, they've been companions to humans for a very long time and are seen as symbols of peace through doves (which are the same as pigeons). I wanted to try and capture some of that peace and docility for myself in a rather tumultuous time, and looked to stained glass windows for inspiration since religious artists have often turned to these birds as symbols in their art.

Process:

I made a 4"x4"x5" closed box in MakerCase. It's on the short side because the bulbs I saw used for wax warmers were on the smaller side compared to most candelabra base bulbs, and I wanted to make sure the dish would be rather close to the bulb so it could properly warm-up. Then, I created a handful of sketches exploring how best I wanted to try and depict my stained glass feeling and how I would like to simplify the birds for cutting purposes.

The creation of the design itself relied on the polyline, arc, and tools. Offset and O-snap were very useful for this. Curves are extremely limited - essentially to just the hole for the socket, the sun, and the birds - to help add contrast between the hard edges of the "glass" and to these more organic elements. I had to print my box well before I built the actual 3D model itself in Rhino, and this ended up informing my renders: I mimicked what I did to the real item in 3D as well as possible with Keyshot.

Materials:

I used 1/4" 2x2 plywood for the cuts and attached parchment paper inside using glue. The cord is a E12 base socket with an on/off switch. The bulb is just small, incandescent, and has a candelabra base. Some really old Minwax Wood Finish was applied on the wood after sanding.

In KeyShot, I modified some of the base materials to try and match what I had closer. The Walnut texture was darkened and its contrast bumped up to try and represent my stain and a foggy glass texture to represent the parchment paper which helps diffuse the light.