In coordination with Oakland Heritage Alliance, I’m hosting my first-ever open studio!

Theodore Ellison Designs has been making historically-inspired art glass, lighting and mosaics for homes all over the country from his East Oakland studio for the past 15 years. This studio visit will include a presentation of his work and approach to design, a discussion about the techniques and materials common in historical windows and a slide show of notable glass installations around Oakland and the Bay Area.

More information here.

We just installed a pair of windows for a home designed by Walter Steilberg in the 1920’s. The original plans show leaded glass in the two main entry doors that were highly geometric abstractions. The homeowner hired me to design and build windows that retained the framework and introduced a more organic design.

The current issue of American Bungalow features some windows I made for Lynne and Audel Davis of Berkeley, California. Audel is a copperworker whose work I’ve admired for years. Like me, he’s interested in creating his own designs rather than reproducing work from the past. A while back we started talking about a trade; they wanted a pair of my windows around their fireplace and I needed a set of Audel’s Libery-inspired candlesticks.

Audel made these ceiling lanterns with glass from the now defunct Chicago Art Glass, who made the translucent amber glass I used in the windows. You can see a close up of the window here in the bottom right corner.

He’s converted his garage into a workshop where he creates his lighting from flat sheets of copper.

These are a few of the hammered copper lights he’s created over the years. For more on Audel’s approach to craft and design, click here to read his conversation with Roger Moss.

I made this window for the kid’s room of a long time client. They had an issue with too much light coming into the room after bedtime so we came up with the idea to make this window out a custom glass I had left over from another project. For added interest I added 3 constallations within the array of stars; Orion, Leo and the Big Dipper.

This set of windows were made for a home in upstate New York. From the dozens of sketches I made at the beginning of the project, I proposed a design that had the solidity of an established old-growth Cherry balanced with the lightness of flowering branches lightly draping across the multiple windows of the installation. The client liked the idea and I refined the concept further in the full size illustations we built from. We used special production glass for this project and I did all of the decorative metal work throughout.

You can see a detail here.

Over the past several years, we’ve been working with Shawn Kammerer of the Craftsman Door Company to create one-of-a-kind entries for homes all over the Bay Area. It’s not easy to find the set of skills Shawn brings to every project: an understanding of aesthetics, an extremely well crafted product and solid business practices. I’m very pleased to have top notch craftspeople to collaborate with and over the coming months I’ll be posting projects that are on the workbench now.

This entry set was made for a home in Danville, California.

We made a set of windows for the dining room based on the same motif.

We made this bathroom window for a client who desired privacy and the color of lavender wisteria that adorns the front of his home. We also designed wisteria windows for the entry and will post those images at the end of the project.