NO TEA, NO SHADE - Why doesn’t Blenko sell lamp shades?

If you’ve ever bought a Blenko lamp, you’ll notice that, in order to affix our beautiful finials at the top of the form, we use one of the innovations introduced by Winslow Anderson when he designed our first - iconic - line of lamps in the 1950s: the adjustable harp! This contraption allows for you to adjust the height of your lamp shade, but also requires a kind of lamp shade that is a little more difficult to find than the average shade.

Spider or harp lamp shades are the kind that have the spokes radiating out from the center of the shade that allows for you to affix the finial above the top of the shade. They’re available in some major hardware chains and big box stores – we’ve had luck finding some good, basic shapes in several different sizes. And there are online retailers that have a variety of shades available for our lamps.

But we recognize that shades are a point of departure for your customization – a great way to connect the Blenko lamp you love to the rest of your decor. Maybe you shy away from white, or lean into patterns: a shade of your choosing means that you have the power to bring the whole room together.

We have sold shades in the past, but we found it difficult for several important reasons. First, shades are hard to store in a factory setting in such a way as to keep dust, cat hair, and other things out of the fabric and folds of shades. Shades are also really hard to pack and ship! They’re often made out of bendable metals, papers, and delicate fabrics, and there are a lot of pitfalls making sure they retain shape during shipping. And finally, they have the potential to add disproportionately to the cost of the lamp itself should we provide them: we don’t manufacture lighting at the rate or scale of an actually industrial factory, and so acquiring shades, even wholesale, doesn’t scale economically sensibly for us.