Alison MacDonald of ACKfire studios gets the replacement glass jewels ready for the Watch Room skylights/Lantern Room floor panels.
We’re getting down to the fine details now. The missing glass jewels that form the skylights for the Watch Room ceiling and the floor pieces for the Lantern Room are now being cast.
The Nantucket artisans at Ackfire Studios are hard at work right now creating replacements for the missing heavy glass jewels embedded in the round bronze skylight frames.
Alison MacDonald of Ackfire visited Graves Light in April to examine the job and take measurements.
Now, the colored glass disks have been cut and are being cast in tiny molds within a large kiln.
We love our local artist community! Here is the Ackfire crew cutting individual discs of glass which will be melted and formed in these little molds.
The resulting glass jewels will be glazed into the lantern floor this month.
These glass pieces are reproductions of the missing original glass from the 1903 architectural design, and are copied from the remaining originals.
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- Alison made this mold to cast new pieces of glass to replace the missing ones in the Graves Light skylights.
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- Alison works on a skylight. She’s in the Lantern Room, looking down at the floor. The photographer is in the Watch Room, looking up at the ceiling.
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- One of the 13 skylights, containing the round tiles of glass. The larger circular area on the right is a skylight with the bronze-and-glass insert removed.
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- John builds the bronze lantern railing so that we can have an open area and still keep the beacon secure as a US Coast Guard aid to navigation.
