When a Tiffany-style lamp comes to me for repair I am usually the first person to attempt that repair. However, sometimes the client has been elsewhere to get their lamp fixed and that repair has not worked.

This latter situation was the case with a large standard lamp. Unusually, the lady had asked a motorbike mechanic to see if he could fix her lamp, which had pulled apart at the top around the metal vase cap. I guess she thought his soldering skills and motorbike filler could be the answer.

Unfortunately, that repair did not hold. He soldered a bit and used some sort of brown filler to re-join the rest of the glass to the vase cap. As there is a lot of weight in a glass lampshade, that joint at the top needs to be well secured. The filler came away from the vase cap and the lampshade was unusable again.

When I had the lamp in hand my first job was to remove the previous repair solder and filler. I was pleased to find that the filler chipped off quite easily. Two pieces of glass at the top had been soldered back into place and were positioned very unevenly so I removed them and refoiled them before soldering back into position.

As this was a large and heavy lampshade, I added reinforcement strips and wire inside the top of the shade and soldered them into place to ensure the join between the vase cap and the glass was secure.

The photo of the lit lampshade was sent by the customer once she had it back home. I was pleased to be able to do a strong repair for her and she was very pleased to be able to enjoy her pretty lamp once more.