I had thought about using a similar technique but with an oven instead of open flame. Coat the pieces, slow heat, let it work. The problem was figuring out how to position everything so the wax didn’t pool in weird places. Never quite solved that one. It would have been a bonze-ish transparent finish.

I also thought about black paint. Decided against it. Paint would have covered too much of the blacksmithing texture and I didn’t want to lose that.

The base was purchased, but I let it sit in the fire for a bit to pick up some scale and character so it would match the rest of the piece better.

I bought the wrong wire. And I had my welder too hot when I was attaching the sepals, burned a hole through the pipe, and some weld seeped in and created a choke point.

So hiding the wire inside the stem may not be an option anymore. The backup plan is to wind the wire around the outside of the stem the way it appears in some of the photos, then use black heat shrink to blend the socket leads and wire together more neatly. I’ll know more once the correct thinner wire arrives. I’m kind of preferring the vine look. When I make them for sale, I may offer both ways.

What Comes Next
Overall I’m really happy with how this turned out. Happy enough that I’m planning to make a series of around ten of these and see how they sell.

Before I do that I want to run a series of pendant flower lamp tests first. Different flower shapes, different styles, figure out which ones work best with this kind of desk lamp format. That’ll inform the next batch and eventually the bigger version I’ve been planning since the start.

The whole point of this prototype was to learn what I needed to learn. To go a bit bigger and braver. I have lots of notes for the next size up for when I am ready to go up step.