When Someone Says, “Can You Make This?”
A surprising number of my candleholders have started with someone saying, in one way or another, “Can you make something like this?”
Sometimes they have a particular subject in mind. Sometimes it’s a color, a place, a symbol, or even a painting. And sometimes all I really get is the beginning of an idea.
That’s actually one of the things I enjoy most about doing custom work.
I’m not usually trying to make an exact copy of something. What I’m really doing is taking someone else’s idea and figuring out how to turn it into one of my candleholders — in glass, with light, and hopefully with some of my own personality still showing through.
One of the best examples of that was “Starry Night.”
A woman contacted me and asked if I could make something resembling Van Gogh’s Starry Night, but she wanted it on a 9-inch round bowl because she already owned another piece made that way and liked the shape. (She showed me a picture of it. It was a jack-o'-lantern! Stunningly horrible... I knew I could do better!)
Of course, I said yes.
I have always had a little trouble turning down a good challenge.
The interesting part came immediately afterward, when I had to figure out exactly how I was going to do it.
A round bowl is obviously very different from working on one of my usual square or rectangular vessels. So before cutting any glass, I took a tape measure and measured the circumference of the bowl, then drew the whole design out flat on a piece of paper about 21 inches long and 6½ inches high — basically what the outside of the bowl would look like if you could unwrap it and lay it flat.
And then... I didn't start.
This is another part of making things that I don't talk about very often. For some reason, I sometimes have a strange little fear of beginning a new piece, especially one I've never done before. I can have the idea worked out in my head and the glass sitting there waiting for me, but putting down that first piece of glass somehow feels like a commitment. Once that first piece goes on, the whole process has begun, and everything else has to grow from it.
Since this customer wasn't in any particular hurry, I had the luxury — or perhaps the excuse — of putting it off for a while. I think it sat there for a couple of weeks while I thought about it, looked at it, probably walked past it a hundred times, and tried to convince myself to begin.
But eventually I put that first piece of glass on.
And, as usually happens, once I actually started, the fear disappeared and I just got to work.
From there I began choosing and cutting the glass, trying to capture the movement and colors of the original painting while still making something that worked as a candleholder.
All told, I probably spent about 16 hours on it.
Fortunately, it came out great. She was very happy with it, and so was I.
But “Starry Night” is really only one example.
One of my most popular designs ever actually began the same way.
Years ago, a friend asked me to make a candleholder as a gift for his brother, who lived in the forest and loved walking among the evergreen trees. That was really all I had to go on.
From that simple idea came “Evergreen.”
I designed the piece around the feeling of being among those trees — the greens, the vertical shapes, the sense of looking through a forest.
What I certainly didn’t know at the time was that Evergreen would become one of my most popular designs. I believe I’ve made and sold around 38 of them now, each one a little different from the others because of the glass and the way I make them.
So one person’s request for a gift ended up creating a design that has stayed with me for years.
One of my favorite Evergreen orders came from a pastor in Wrightwood, California.
He ordered nine of them.
They were going to be gifts for some of the major volunteers at his church.
Making nine versions of essentially the same design was an interesting experience because I didn't want them to look like nine factory copies. I wanted each person to receive his or her own Evergreen.
So they became a family.
Related, certainly — but each one a little different.
When I finally had all nine finished and had my "ritual first lighting", (more on that later).. they didn't really look like nine candleholders anymore.
They looked like a little forest.
I liked that so much that I made a slow-motion video moving through all of them.
I think that video probably shows what I like most about making these things better than I can explain it. That’s one of the things I find fascinating about custom work. You really never know where an idea is going to lead.
Another customer once asked me to create a candleholder with a different Celtic symbol on each of the four sides.
That presented a completely different kind of problem.
Each symbol had to work on its own, but the four sides also had to look like they belonged together as one finished piece. Some of the Celtic shapes were pretty intricate, which made cutting and fitting the glass considerably more challenging than it first appeared.
But those are often the pieces I enjoy the most.
It ended up being one of my better efforts, I think, and certainly one of the more complicated ones.
Looking back, I realize that many pieces I’m particularly proud of probably would never have existed if someone hadn’t first come to me with an idea.
That may sound as though custom work limits creativity because someone else is telling you what they want. For me, I think it often does exactly the opposite.
It gives me a problem I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of myself.
How do I make a forest?
How do I turn a famous painting into something that wraps around a bowl?
How do I put four completely different Celtic symbols on four sides of one candleholder and still make the whole thing feel connected?
Those little problems force me to think differently, and sometimes they lead to designs that stay around long after the original commission is finished.
So when someone contacts me and says, “I have an idea…” I usually say, bring it on!
I may not know exactly how I’m going to do it yet.
But I will!