HARD LABOR - Why is lighting so expensive?

Imagine making the most beautiful blown glass form. And then taking that beautiful blown glass form over to a giant drill press, crossing your fingers, and bringing the whirring diamond-tipped bit down into and through that glass. A day in the life of our beloved Charle Harshbarger! If you’re not a fan of shattering glass, then maybe you don’t want to imagine this.

Every single piece of glass we use for lighting has to go through two additional stations before becoming the amazing lamp or pendant you see. It has to go first to our Cold Shop. Perhaps we’re cutting off the extra length of the lamp base, or we’re drilling a hole into the body of it. Maybe we’re grinding the lip of a base to be fitted to the fixture. But it’s got to go through whirring, whizzing, diamond-tipped steel monsters first and foremost.

Secondly, it has to pass through the capable hands of our beloved Charlie. He’s got to make sure we have all of the additional pieces and parts that make a lamp a lamp! Wooden bases measured to the glass, adjustable harps as per our hallmark, the perfectly matched finial. The finial itself has to be submitted to all of the Steel Beasts, too, so that can be a hinky part of the process, as well.

Each one of those pieces we add to the lamp to make it work costs additional money and supply chain time – so they’re one of the more expensive things we make. But we know they’re worth it – they’re not just an investment in beauty, but in legacy. Lighting is such a special thing to make with our glass: our colors and shapes make for timeless products that bridge different styles and eras.

There is a corollary question from the comments as well – why do you not make pendants or lamps in X way or with Y hardware to suit my taste or space? Lighting is a pretty unstandardized field – different companies make differently sized parts and fixtures. Different spaces ask for different scales for lighting, too – the same pendant light you might hang next to a bed won’t work in size or scale for a chandelier pendant. Each one of our lamp bases or pendant shades requires a different mould – and so it doesn’t make sense to make one shape in several different sizes unless we were confident in advance that there was a market for that many sizes. So now, when we design lighting, we do so as most lighting designers would – we design the whole product from start to finish. We know you might like more customization in lighting and lamps – but it simply doesn’t make sense in a company of our size with as many variables as are already built into our process. That said, we are steering into the most new lighting options we’ve had in several years – and we hope you like our designs! There will be enough on the table by the end of 2024 that if one lamp or pendant doesn’t appeal to you: there are more coming down the road!