Confessions from the Workroom – Vol 1.

Hello there and welcome to ‘Confessions from the Workroom’. I’m Jo and I design and create all of the lampshades here at 53 Interiors.

If you have a look around the website or the online shop, you’ll see a whole range of lampshades, some simple and (relatively) understated and others that are, well, the polar opposite of understated. I design, and for the most part, create every element of these lampshades by hand, here in my Glasgow studio.

It’s become a body of work that I’m pretty proud of and for a while I’ve been trying to find the right way to document my work and my journey. Of course, like everyone doing anything, I have a million photos and videos stored on the cloud and these definitely show the visual progression, but they do not, in any way, capture the full journey and the ordered chaos that is my workroom and my mind.

So ‘Confessions from the Workroom’ is my attempt to capture a little more of what I do, what I’m learning, my triumphs and my fails to maybe inspire, but at the very least amuse anyone who wants to read about the ever deeper, ever darker abyss of traditional crafts and skills I choose to immerse myself in for my ‘art’.

Lampshade Making is a Gateway Drug

Before we begin I think it’s only fair that I share with you one thing I’ve learned over the last few years – lampshade making is addictive. Not only is it addictive in its own right but it’s a gateway drug. If you venture into this craft or know someone who wishes to dabble, then look to me as a warning – I started out as a woman who just wanted to use up fabric scraps and now I devote my life to the pursuit of the perfect shade.

A world of creativity

You may be wondering how it’s possible to become quite so obsessed with lampshade making, but within every hand-sewn shade is much more than frame and fabric. It is a world of endless possibilities and I can assure you, I intend to explore them all!