Repurposed (Explored)

The Saturday Self-Challenge: take a shot of one of your favorite mementos and tell us the story as to why it got to be that way.

This is a segment of a lamp with a clarinet as its base.

A number of years ago, I was in charge of finding a farewell gift for our band conductor of many years. He was a clarinetist, so I thought that he might like a clarinet lamp. I found some old metal clarinets that were up for bid on eBay and placed bids on them, expecting to only win one auction. I won both auctions. I made a lamp for him and one for me. I like this clarinet lamp because it reminds me of good times playing under his baton, it was something that I made (with help from my husband after I discovered that the design of the base had to be changed to prevent the lamp from tipping over) and it is a remnant of a time before plastic when cheaper instruments for students or outdoor playing were made out of metal, rather than wood.

Here's a photograph of the lamp in its entirety. www.ipernity.com/doc/esther/41760442. The clarinet is silver colored, but the camera color temperature meter was fooled by the indoor lighting and it appears to have a golden color in the latest photograph. I liked the color shift, so I did not correct it.

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