Swords to Reading Lights
Additional information
| Dimensions | 5 × 4 × 15 in |
|---|
Aluminum L107MA guidance system shell for a Cold War Era guided missile, gold leafed, 6 dimmable 40 watt equivalent LED frosted bulbs in threaded porcelain E26 sockets wired with blue rayon wrapped 2-wire through brass inserts, suspended on stainless steel cable and pulleys under an 3-inch I-beam and trolley.
$5,000
The core of this fixture is the shell of a Singer L107MA produced during the Cold War as a rotating memory upgrade for guided missiles. The upgrade was described as having a capacity of 0.4 million words (without describing how long the words were). I found two of these at a scrapyard in Burbank, California, located near the then mysterious yet famous “Skunkworks”, where I used to buy odd bits for the furniture I was making at the time, such as titanium bolts by the pound. As a reading light sculpture, it repeats the sentiment of the USSR’s gift to the United Nations in 1959, sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich of transforming our tools for destruction into tools of benefit for mankind. The light’s not big enough for all mankind, but two people could read under it.
