In what's getting to be a tiresomely long history. But at last I can actually talk a little bit about how I've set up my current space.

Like a great many artists, I've been on the lookout for suitable storage for my supplies. One item on the long-term wish list, from before I even became a lampworker, was a mechanics’ tool chest, which has lots of shallow but very wide, deep and strongly mounted drawers. They're very expensive, but wonderful. Time and luck presented me with something else just as good: map cases.

Three of these things were up for grabs, and the wizard's name got pulled for one, a ‘top’. Someone else, who got only a bottom, decided s/he didn't want it, and put a note ‘take me too’. Drawers large and heavy-duty enough to support maps support glass rods very nicely. One of our neighbors in Detroit threw out the old steel table, which we salvaged, stripped, and waxed using a propane torch and a chunk of beeswax (I wanted a nontoxic coating. Bonus is that it smells good.)

As it happens, the map cases are exactly the height of the steel table legs, so we removed one set and slid the map case under one end of the table, leaving just enough room for me to sit comfortable thereby making the most of limited space.

The apothecary's chest, purchased for $50 from an old jeweler going out of business, took my dad and me a year of clamping and gluing to restore, but now it works great; it's positioned back-to-back from the stacked map cases, and holds the semiprecious beads that used to hang in the attic stairwell at the old house.

Stringing desk, side view, with a custom made wood storage for some of my little bead bins. This my dad and I built years ago. That dark grey mass behind the chair is yet more bead storage. (And there are more little bins, of yet a different type, in the desk.) I have a lot of beads.

This oak bookcase was originally a builtin for the wizard's grandmother. Lucky for me, it's just the right size to hold my ‘blue case’ storage, including a lot of seed beads and findings. On top is my satake rod, in a very pretty wooden box the wizard built out of scrap. Some day, after I get rid of the satake, I want to put all my stringer and twisties into it.

Next to it are the milk-crate storage on casters for my backstock rod and the fresh air intakes for the exhaust fan.

• main studio file
• starting on new studio
• wallpaper removal
• painting tips
• ventilation
• not as tidy 2005 studio, showing hood

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn