Geometric Designs

La Cañada Entry Doors – Geometrical Design with Custom Bevels

The owners of this La Cañada home wanted to bring light into the foyer and update the Entry. The original entry doors were simple flat solid wood doors, but they had very ornate eight-inch embossed brass escutcheons around the door knobs. Using the escutcheon design for inspiration, the new doors with custom beveled glass pieces provided a grand new portal into the home. The effect is transformational to the house.

The morning after the installation, one of the homeowners appeared from the bedroom and for a moment, thought that the front doors had been left open—there was so much light now entering where once it was dark. Upon making this comment to his wife later in the morning, she mused that she too had the same thought when she woke up that morning. The couple thoroughly loved the new Entry.

A couple of years later, the couple decided to move out-of-state and so put the house up for sale. By coincidence, we knew the realtor who listed the house. After the sale of the house, she called us to let us know that the new owners commented that one of the main reasons they decided to purchase the house was how struck they were with the beautiful leaded glass Entry Doors.

Malibu – Ornate Quatrefoil Dormer Windows

Tico Tech, Inc.^TM received a call from an architect one afternoon asking if we could produce a certain quatrefoil patterned window. They had offered the client a simple clear window with exterior metal bars in the prescribed pattern. The client hoped for the metal pattern to be part of the window and sought out Tico Tech, Inc. to see if we could even attempt such a design.

That same afternoon, we got busy in our shop and produced a single quatrefoil mock-up with sculpted lead. We photographed the sample and then packaged the mock-up in clear plastic. The following morning, we delivered the sample to the architects, let them handle the sample so that they could see it was possible, and left them with the photograph, which they would share with the client that same afternoon with a scheduled client meeting. Needless to say, the design was approved and we proceeded to make ten panels for the dormers at the residence.

The design is deceptively simple yet executing the fabrication was particularly challenging as each lead piece had to be sculpted (wide at the tips with the arrow points and narrow in the middle) prior to being assembled, and the glass pieces themselves required painstaking effort to achieve the repetitive inside corners for each piece. For added artistic value, when soldering the panel, the solder points were deliberately shaped to resemble round rivet heads.

Beverly Hills – Quatrefoil Arched Windows

We received a call from a contractor asking if we could produce a quatrefoil pattern window for a house under construction in Beverly Hills. After meeting with the contractor, we provided an estimate and did not hear back from him for almost a year. When we met again, both the contractor and the client asked several times if we could, in fact, make the pattern they desired. Apparently in the year following our estimate, they had shopped the design around and whatever studios they approached told them the design was not possible and had offered other designs—which the client rejected.

We, therefore, went to work creating this seemingly impossible beautiful pattern for not one window, but rather two windows. The glass specified was standard 1/8” clear double strength glass rather than something with a pattern or texture. Once completed and installed, we were asked to return to see about repairing one of the panels. Apparently, someone who was in disbelief that the window had been correctly built went to the job site and was convinced that we had simply “glued” the lead came on top of a large single clear glass pane. So sure was this person that we had “cheated,” that he asked to prove the point by sticking a screwdriver under the lead to demonstrate to the contractor that the lead would simply lift off the glass. Much to his surprise, he ended up breaking two of the quatrefoil pieces, thus requiring an immediate repair of an otherwise perfectly intact and stunning window.

One of the services we provide at Tico Tech, Inc.^TM is to photograph and document our production so that clients may have a provenance of their art. We would have happily taken photographs during assembly of the window to show that we were constructing the leaded window piece by piece per our contract. We have done so for other commissions as well as invite the client to the studio to see the work directly. Since this commission, we have done the same pattern with other types of textured glass which leaves no doubt that the glass panel is made up of separate pieces.