Replace plastic and metal with natural materials: ceramic translucent pottery
September 24, 2009 § 10 Comments
Liz Emtage Ceramics : translucent pottery for warm glowing lights
I am in a constant quest of renewable and green materials to craft different objects around the house but thus far I haven’t been able to imagine a good material for lamp shades. Usual materials are glass (too energy intensive, difficult to work with even in recycled state), plastic (not eco-frienly, petroleum-based product) and metal (energy-intensive, opaque). One could use wood timber or some sort of thick paper for translucency but my interest has been sparked by liz emtage ceramics, pottery made by heat treated ceramic clay in combination with paper. Paper burns leaving a delicate translucent structure perfect for creating a warm light if used as a shade for a lamp.
Liz Emtage Ceramics : translucent pottery for warm glowing lights
Liz Emtage Ceramics : translucent pendant lamp for warm glowing lights
Liz Emtage Ceramics : translucent pottery for warm glowing lights
(liz emtage ceramics via littlewillow)
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nice works!!!! I feel that people will love ceramics in brief!!!!!
If only the process of making them was less energy intensive. I suppose that adding paper to the mix lowers the energy expended by firing as there is less actually ceramic material to burn. I am not into pottery but I don’t know of any eco-friendly additives to lower the firing temperature. Perhaps you know more…
Following a similar research we came to the same conclusions, a year ago we started a new project for a line of lamps and we used glazed ceramic for the body and the shades of the lamps.
Here you can see the results and give us an opinion:
http://lampade-led.blogspot.com/
I don’t have much experience with ceramic lampshades. I’ve seen all around DIY projects of “tea cup lamp” or “flower pot lamp” but the fact that the ceramic is totally opaque makes it better suited for a spot-lamp (where LEDs come also handy as they make focused light beams). I salute your take on ceramics instead of petroleum-based plastics and your modern lamps looks great.
[...] have to write this one down. I tried so much to find such information when I was writing the article on replacing plastic and metal with translucent ceramics and somehow I missed it, so for future reference I will write about it right [...]
Wow! Those are beautiful!
Yes, I agree. Simply mesmerizing really. I can’t stop watching them sometimes.
those ceramic works are awsome!! even i would like to do something like that and yeah i did it with ice-cream sticks it was great and it is also sold!!
Liz’s work is truly beautiful. We now stock Liz as a permanent designer here at raw dice with some one off pieces as well as the cowparsley and summer grasses collections.
http://www.rawdice.co.uk/index.php?rewrite=category&catid=18
Cigdem
http://rawdice.wordpress.com/