Frank Lloyd Wright Style Lamp
| February 2026 |
This lamp is inspired by the geometric designs and patterns from Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and designs. This lamp is x” by x” and is x” tall and is made from White Oak panels, Purple Heart for the vertical supports, and Padauk for the top and base of the lamp. While I had a rough idea of what I wanted to build. I did not plan this project out and instead made design and construction choices on the fly which did result in some challenges and flaws in the final lamp.
I started by milling the White Oak panels that would be laser cut with the final design. Using a jointer, planer, and bandsaw, I milled four panels and planed them to about 1/8” thick with the intent that they would sit in a grooves cut into the vertical Purple Heart supports. At this point, I had not decided the size of the panels because the size would be dependent on the final vectorized design. There were several different geometric patterns to choose from and after browsing Pinterest and a book of designs, I settled on a few that I vectorized with centerline drawings in AutoCAD. I decided to created a laser-cuttable vectorline design for only one of the patterns with a final panel size of 3-1/4” x 10.”
The panels sit in two grooves cut into the Purple Heart supports 1/8” from the inside edge. This resulted in a very small cross-section of material left and in a softer wood would not be structurally sound. However, since Purple Heart is so dense, the supports are just to hold the panels in place, and will not be under any load, I decided that it would be good enough for this application.
The top and bottom stepped tiers of the lamp are made from Padauk with a 45° chamfer. This design choice was inspired by a lamp I had seen on Reddit. For the top shade, I copied a section of the main geometric pattern and adapted it to fit. For the bottom, I used a Forstnet bit to cut circles that the lamp socket would be routed through. The two tiers are separated by small pieces of Padauk that are about 3/8” thick.
In terms of the construction, I was a bit stumped on the best way to assemble the lamp while ensuring that the top shade could be removed to change the bulb if needed. I decided to use small screws to connect the Purple Heart supports to the first Padauk panel on the top and bottom. Then for the bottom panel, I used epoxy to glue the Purple Heart spacers to the second Padauk piece, since wood glue would result in squeeze-out that would be hard to clean and it takes longer to fully cure. For the top, because of my lack of planning, I use double-sided tape to stick the Purple Heart spacers to the top shade and installed small magnets in the spacers which would stick to the screws used to connect the supports.
Finally, due to all the different and hard to reach surfaces, I opted for a matte polyurethane spray finish. Despite the initial lack of planning, I am pleasantly surprised at the final result.
