Japanese Cedar Night Light
A new experiment in design for us, resulting in a new and unexpected final form. For a while we have wanted to add the category 'nightlight' to our lighting choices. We have been keeping for a special occasion a wonderful piece of very delicate and aromatic Japanese cedar, and decided to use it for our new exploration. The initial design was a basic "lamp post" shaped upper portion, narrow at the bottom and flaring out at the top, supported on three little splayed legs. We cut the 4 sides at the desired angle and realized what we should have known to begin with--that strategy would create a concave bottom that would be very difficult to create a flat bottom for to support the legs evenly. But we loved the shape of the wood "shade". After fooling with different possibilities for legs or base, we hit upon the idea of using two matching angled pieces we had cut away to form the shade, glued them back to back and poof! We had a super cute leg design. We angled the inner sides a bit more to allow for the electrical cord and then flipped the shade portion upside down from its originally intended orientation and carved four little triangles out in order to nest in the top of the base. The shade simply lifts off to allow access to the mini LED light bulb. We drilled numerous tiny holes around the four sides of the shade for pinpoint light to supplement the glow emanating from the top and bottom of the shade. This little guy is loaded with personality! It was a prototype for us but we fully intend to use this spontaneous 'design' again in the future. The lamp measures 11" tall by 4 1/2" wide at the maximum width of the shade and was finished with a hand rubbed polyurethane satin finish to enhance the natural colors and grain.