When considering what material to use for my up-cycle project, the first thing to come to mind was a power line insulator. During my grandfather’s career in the power industry, he acquired a decent sized collection of retired insulators that have yet to been put to use. Additionally, I have always been intrigued by the unique shape and appearance of these objects. The availability coupled with the unique aesthetic lead me to choose this material as the central element of my upcycle project.

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, I wanted my upcycle project to provide a utility. Through some reasearch on the potential uses of recycled insulators and the lack of lighting in my current room, I settled on makeing a lamp.

Currently, In my design process, I am exploring what material to use as the base of the lamp. I have three ideas that would all portray differing aesthetics. The first of these ideas is to use gas pipe as inspired by the image above. This idea would be relatively easy to assemble and incorporate another up-cycled material while having a very industrial aesthetic. Another idea for the base is to use a large sanded stick that would employ a natural aesthetic while still being centered around the industrial looking insulator. My last idea is to abandon the glass insulator and rather use an upside-down porcelain insulator as that base of a more traditional style lamp. This would be very different from the other two options but utalize the insulator in a unique way.

I plan to have the base material decided by the end of the week. This ensures I will have plenty of time to finalize the design, and to create the final product.