I’ve had these lamps since the early 70s. I loved them when I bought them but they’re brass and in the past few years the brass had really gotten ugly. My attempts to ‘clean’ them only seemed to make the brass darker. In addition, the lampshade fabric was becoming very threadbare.
Last year we repainted the living room and my plan was to buy new lamps. We looked for months and couldn’t find anything we liked. It was hard to find tall lamps. My old lamps are fairly tall at 43 inches. I like the taller lamps because they look good in my living room with the vaulted ceilings. So I decided to keep the old lamps.
First I took the lamps to Lampcrafters in Daytona Beach where they did an excellent job refurbishing the old lamps and cleaning up the brass. Unfortunately they do not recover lampshades and didn’t know anyone in town that did. After some research, I decided I could do this myself. It even occurred to me that I might make a business of recovering lampshades. I cringe a little now at my naiveté.
Besides biting off more than I can chew, I tend to agonize over every detail of a project and this one was no exception. First was the fabric choice. I decided to go with Shantung silk the color of the walls (Sandstorm by Valspar) rather than gold to match the lamps. I thought it would be too much gold. I was wrong. In hindsight gold fabric would have been much better.
When I removed the original fabric and lining it quickly disintegrated so much I couldn’t use it for a pattern which required creating my own pattern. This was a major headache and required all kinds of adjustments after the fabric was cut. However, I bought extra yardage of fabric, which was a good thing, as I had several restarts on the first shade.
Another problem was that I found the bottom of the frame was wider than the top. The difference was very subtle. So subtle in fact, I’d never noticed it in all the years I’d owned the lamps. That required more cutting and refitting.
The lining was especially difficult and after struggling with a typical lining fabric, I eventually thought of using a slightly stretchy knit. An unconventional lining but it worked a lot better and looks just as good.
Last was the trim and it was the hardest to match to the fabric and another reason I wish I’d stuck to the gold color. There are lots of gold trims available but not much to match sandstorm. But finally I found one that matched close enough. By this time, I was just ready to get done with this project.
Here are the two lamps side by side. Can you tell which one is the new one and which one is the old one?




