Victorian Stained Glass Light with Tooled Leather Crest

This is one of my favorite pieces to date. It integrates all 3 mediums I like to work in, wood working, stained glass and tooled leather. It is also pretty substantial in size, standing in total just over 3 feet, which makes it fairly dramatic.

The wood for this is oak, with a decorative moulding and a dark stain. The piece is hung via a french cleat and the moulding makes it flush with the wall. The stained glass actually sits in a routed curve on the base which helps hold it in place.

The tooled leather top is done in something of a sunburst pattern, which ties it in with the light below. The leather makes it look either as though the sun were illuminating the stained glass or the whole piece is a candle, which is kind of fun.

With this piece I moved into working in 3 dimensions with stained glass, the entire stained glass piece is actually a half cylinder about 4 inches in diameter. This roundness of the stained glass brings it out and allowed me to backlight it with a string of LED lights (very energy efficient and have a life span of about 50,000 hours). The are over 300 individual pieces of glass in the stained glass cylinder which is done in a Victorian style.

During the day time all 3 elements of the piece work together, the wood craft, the tooled leather and the stained glass. At night the backlit stained glass really glows and changes the dimension of the piece into something even more dramatic.