The Art of Darkness

Hand Lights

February 5th, 2014 by Cobwebs

Hand Lights

I’m not sure what you’d call this, but it’d be a hell of a light fixture.

I saw it online, unattributed, and finally tracked the original photo down to Something Created Every Day: It was a display created by Tim Holtz for his booth at the Craft & Hobby Association trade show:

Tim said that his neighbor painted the hands, the lights are from Ikea and either the bulbs are special or the glass is colored (I don’t remember exactly how he described this). Either way, this display was fantastic.

I’m assuming that the hands are probably mannequin hands. I don’t see that particular style of light at Ikea’s site, but they’re also called cage lights. Searching for “industrial hanging light” or “workshop cage light” turns up loads of styles to choose from; I thought this and this were pretty.

The hands are mounted on simple wooden plaques, easy to find in many shapes and sizes at craft and hardware stores. The frame is just a big, rather banged-up picture frame.

This project is certainly DIY-able and would be a really interesting lighting treatment for a room. I assume that since this was done as a temporary decoration the lamp cords are simply hanging loose and plugged in near the floor. For a more permanent fixture you could fasten them all together with cable ties for a slightly less messy appearance.

You could also do individual hands, each with its own frame, for a different take on the same idea.

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