I have been walking my dog on a pre war rubbish tip where the badger population have been busy excavating bottles, jars, shoes, batteries, lightbulbs and vacuum tubes while burrowing their sets. I built up quite a collection of bottles until it reached the point where I needed to decide what to do with them all.

So the idea of a chandelier came about. The starting point was a BMX wheel gleaned from the Broken Spoke bicycle workshop which suspends the bottle bulbs and the bendable gooseneck arms, and a barbecue lid from the scrap metal yard in which the jars are embedded. The finishing touch was a bicycle gear cassette which I converted into a 9 port USB power hub which suspends the small bottles.

The chandelier was displayed at the Director’s Cut exhibition at the OVADA gallery in April 2017 and is currently on display at Tap Social brewery. This piece is for sale and commissions are taken bespoke chandeliers either with your own bottles or bottles from my collection – please enquire email hidden; JavaScript is required.

I’d like to thank the people who have been involved including ebay sellers currentleds and matt.edgar – your well considered advice made a big difference and saved much time. Not to mention Big Clive whose entertaining and informative youtube videos are a joy to watch and inspired the bottle bulbs using LED filaments. Adrian Arbib and Paul Withers for your invaluable electrical advice – I would never have dared work with mains voltages without it. And well informed employees from Smith and Low, Maplins and Homebase, amongst all the other places I visited – it really helps to talk to someone who knows what they are selling. Not to mention everyone here at OVADA putting up with me disappearing into and appearing from clouds of solder fumes…