We are officially bi-coastal!  We installed this railing for my mother & stepfather over the holidays in Durham, North Carolina.  We’re quite relieved that all the pieces survived the freight trip and that our long-distance measuring proved accurate.  For the story behind the railing, click here.

( Note the nice NC sunshine in December — how I miss that! )

A natural rusted look with high durability & low maintenence is achieved with a rust textured powdercoat finish.

Just in time for the shortest day of the year Dave and I added some warmly exotic lighting to our dining room.  For several months I had been eyeing some Vietnamese lights at my favorite local bistro/retail store Mint Tea.   I knew it was time to buy when Abdul, the co-owner, told me they were having a sale on all their fair trade items.  Merry Christmas to me!

Of course, I really wanted to have them hung before a holiday party we were hosting a week later. Nothing like time pressure to keep you hopping!  We designed a very simple metal bracket and Dave went at it.  Here it is:

Distressed & Blackened Steel Bracket

I love the exotic curves of these lights (which I must mention were wired and hung just in time for our party). 

This was our first foray into lighting and we are ready to do more.  Contact us for your own custom lighting dreams.

Here are photos of a recent project we completed in Northeast Portland. Our client is renovating this old beauty with the help of a PDC grant (Portland Development Commission targets certain neighborhoods for revitalization and offers grants for building improvements). It has been converted to two apartments and an art studio.

Word has it that the house has a colorful past, and some of the neighbors worried its notoriety might be forgotten, and along with it some neighborhood character. Our client decided to honor the so named Henry Williams house by calling it “H.W. on Garfield” (the street name), and placing a prominent sign above the porch eave. Wish I knew the history. Or perhaps not – it might not be as romantically intriguing as I imagine. Speakeasy? Brothel? If I get the juice I’ll share it.

Far view of the project showing signage & tubular stair railing.

Stainless Steel House Sign & Address Plates

Letters & numbers were laser cut.

Powder coated stair railing

Installation

Simple, sleek address plates

We recently installed this stair railing at a client’s home.  To read the story behind the design, go here.  We used a hammer textured powder coat called silver vein.

As we wind down from several architectural projects that have been keeping us hopping, Dave and I are finding the mental space and time to focus on sculpture.  I’ve been busily applying for calls-for-artists (’tis the season) while Dave’s been refining some of my sculpture designs using Rhino 3-d modeling software. 

Lately I’ve been hot on making a Shapely series as an exploration of color and shape.  The first Shapely, created earlier this year, was our foray into pure abstraction.  It was fun playing with simple shapes and bold colors, piecing them together to create an eye-catching form and color combination. 

Here’s the maiden Shapely:

Shapely Two, the sleeker cousin of the original has a more contemporary space age look:

I’m toying with a chartreuse green paired with a deep orange.  The color in this picture doesn’t exactly capture what I’m looking for, and it may well look very different on your screen, but it gives an idea of what I’m considering at the moment.  And I just may change my mind drastically as I get samples from Prismatic Powders and play with combinations from actual powder coat color palettes. 

Stay tuned as Shapely Two evolves from a computer model to a physical touchable sculpture.

The Shapely Series
A childlike fascination with bright colors and puzzle pieces resurfaces as we play with vivid yet simple shapes; piecing them together to create flowing lines and a sensuous, more grown-up form.

Dave diverged from metal recently to build a Halloween costume from cardboard. It was all S’s idea; he’s been fixated on Optimus Prime as a costume since Labor Day.

S’s “Transformer” stage is somewhat recent, and admittedly I’m behind the ball on who’s who and the whole storyline. But according to many of the kids at school, he has one of the coolest costumes ever. And did I actually see some adult males drooling?

When I reflect on his history of Halloween costumes, I can’t help but notice my little guy’s growing up.

at 1 year old he was a duck
at 2 he was a frog
at 3 a bat
at 4 a ghost
at 5 a tarantula
at 6 OPTIMUS PRIME

You might guess that he is more excited than ever about Halloween this year.

Oh yeah, and of course Dave had to add something metal and no better place than on Optimus Prime’s helmet head.

I went around with my camera today taking photos of our goings on. 

We recently got this southwestern porch railing back from powder coat.  Next stop, palletize & ship to North Carolina.

Laser cut parts for the ribbit railing.

Rust happens! Natural oxidation in action on the railing we built for our house this summer. It has to get ugly before it gets pretty and develops that overall deep orange brown that we are looking for as a finish.

We love metal here at Cobalt Designworks and pride ourselves on offering infinite possibilities in custom metal work.  Got an idea?  We’ll help you realize it as long as Dave gets to play with iron, alloys and cool tools, and I get to add some design panache.  The challenge with offering such a wide range of goods is that sometimes sculpture as pure art gets placed on the back burner, yielding to functional art or sometimes just plain function.  The past month here it’s been all about railings, and this week it’s looking more and more like we’re in the sign business.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big believer that more art should be built into everyday objects and I’m glad we get to influence that in our own small way. Not to mention that we’re quite happy to have railing and sign jobs right now. Period.  

But today the art-for-art’s-sake urge hit me like a ton of bricks.  I WANT TO CREATE A SCULPTURE!  Early on when we formed the business Dave and I made a pact to always have at least one sculpture in process at any given time no matter what else we’ve got going on in the shop.  For the past few weeks we haven’t been living up to our promise, so today I started looking through my sketchbooks trying to make the delightful decision of what to bring to life next.  I’ve been hesitant to post raw designs but figured I’d risk it and throw them out there for all to see and give you a little glimpse into the early stages of a sculpture idea.

The above design is second in our Shapely series, a play on big simple shapes and bright bold colors. A bit sleeker than the original Shapely and still open to an infinite array of color choices, I envision it standing 10 feet tall. Here’s the original.

This mermaid design has been in my sketchbook since 2002 and I just happened upon it again. I love seafaring mythology. This sculpture would add to our growing collection of powerfully feminine figures. I look forward to refining the design of the scales and breasts, and exploring different textures for each. This will surely give Dave some new fabrication challenges and a chance to expand his metalworking skill set.

The design below is further along in process; from my 2-d pencil sketch we created a refined 3-d version using Rhino software. It is a possible commission for a client who has an office along the Columbia River with river-themed elements throughout.  The waves will be cast glass, a new process for us.  I’ve taken one casting class, and will no doubt need to practice a bit before working on this piece. 

Which sculpture do YOU think we should build next? Leave a comment and let us know.

We were asked to come up with some railing designs for a new client in Battle Ground, WA; an 80 year old woman who is upgrading her home for better accessibility and ease-of-use . Her one-level home with its open floor plan is spacious and classy and she doesn’t want to clutter up its charm with “geriatric looking stuff.” Not quite ready for a ramp or the standard ADA aluminum railings, she gave us leeway to create three simple designs. My feeling was that although she didn’t want the ADA rails, she wasn’t looking for a piece of art either. Functional, sturdy and nice looking were her priorities. “Nothing fancy”, she kept saying, “it’s only two steps!”

I knew we needed to include a simple picket wrought iron rail in the mix. Yes, Dave can make a mean picket railing that looks great and will last forever, but that doesn’t give me much opportunity to show off some design verve. So my challenge was to design something a little arty yet still simple enough and not much over the cost of the standard picket.

I consider the challenge met as we will be building what we’ve dubbed the Ribbit Railing for her. “Cute” she kept saying. My inspiration came from the pond in her front yard where several small frogs have taken up residence. She had us all laughing at her frog tales. Those little guys sometimes hop right into her house! No doubt they bring a fair share of joy to her. Frogs just do that. So I tried to capture some of the joy and whimsy in her railing, while adding a nod to the subtle Asian influences of her house and landscape in the rail ends.

Dave will begin work in the next couple days. We will have the frog image  laser cut, and still have powder coat colors to choose; some dark shade of grey. We expect to have it completed and installed in three weeks, hopefully plenty time before the cold weather kicks in and the frogs burrow down for the winter.

Finally a BIG SHOUT OUT to Lori Rhodig of Access at Home, Inc.  http://accessathomeinc.com/. Lori and her husband recently started a business of retrofitting homes for Accessibility, Safety, and Comfort.  They are beautifully updating this woman’s bathroom to include a walk-in tub (i.e. tub with a door!).  When their client said she wanted a nice railing as well, Lori thought of us, and a nice partnership was formed.

For some time now my mom has been wanting Dave and me to create stair railings for her front porch.  Although I figured out a design a while ago, we are just now getting around to building it and I’m happy to share the progress. 

My mother loves southwestern design motifs and although she lives in North Carolina, she has created a home that hints at the warmth and style of the American southwest.  Eclectic but not overdone, she has added decorative elements like rugs, furnishings, wall hangings and garden ornaments throughout her house & landscape that bring a taste of the southwest to her home .  Soon she will be adding to her collection a metal stair railing as seen above & below.  The railings will be finished with a faux rust powder coat; a great way to achieve an earthy look with the durability and easy maintenance of paint. 

I found inspiration in the beautiful southwest Native American style rugs that are instantly recognizable by their deep colors and bold geometric shapes.  I discovered that the striking patterns lend themselves well to railing design.  I look forward to creating more architectural elements with a native southwestern flair.

Here are just a couple of examples of those wonderful rugs.