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Usual lead times

A note about August
August, in Mireille's words

We close from the 1st to the 24th of August. The steam iron goes off, I go down to my sister's in the Drôme and I try very hard not to make anything with my hands for three weeks. If you post a frame to us during that time it is perfectly safe; it waits on the shelf by the door and it is the first thing I open when I'm back.

Mireille

These are the usual lead times, and the quote gives the real date for your shade. A new welded frame adds one week to any of them. The workshop also closes from 24 December to 2 January.

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The workshop

One Room, Two Pairs of Hands

Mireille spent eleven years in a theatre costume workroom, cutting and sewing for the stage, before she opened Froumbra in a ground-floor room in Lyon in 2013.

The first frames came from neighbours who had seen the work through the window. For thirteen years orders came by word of mouth, and the lead times lived on a note taped to the door. Anouk joins on Thursdays and Fridays as a part-time stitcher, and between them around 400 shades leave the room each year, roughly half new and half recovered.

Fig. 10 · PlanThe workroom
Plan of the workroom: one room with a window onto the street, the door in a corner, the cutting table in the middle, the pressing table by the window wall, the sewing bench along the back and the frame shelf on the side wall, with a 2 metre scale. Window onto the street Door Cutting table Pressing table Sewing bench Frame shelf 2 m
Fig. 10Cutting in the middle, pressing by the window, sewing along the back, and the frames waiting on the shelf.

Step by step

How a Tailored Shade Is Made

Five stages, in the order they happen on the bench.

01Binding the frame

Both rings and the struts that will carry the cover are wound in cotton binding tape, tight and overlapping, and the ends are stitched down. Every stitch that follows goes into this tape, never round the bare wire.

02Pinning the cover

The cloth is cut on the bias, laid over the frame and pinned to the taped rings, working round in opposite pairs so the pull stays even. Pins move many times before the cloth sits without a wrinkle.

03Sewing to the rings

The cover is oversewn to the binding tape round both rings with small stitches by hand, and the excess is trimmed close to the stitching.

04Fitting the balloon lining

A lining is sewn into a tube, dropped inside the frame and stitched to the rings over the top of the cover's stitching, so no strut or seam shows when the bulb is on.

05Finishing the edges

A bias strip of the same cloth is folded and stitched over both rings to hide the stitching, and the shade goes on a test lamp to be looked at with the light on.

Fig. 11 · DetailKnife pleats at the top ring
A close detail of knife pleats in silk hanging from the top ring, each pleat folded the same way, a pin through every fourth pleat at the ring, and a citron pleat gauge laid below with marks at each pleat width. Pleat gauge Top ring Pins every fourth pleat Knife pleats
Fig. 11Pleats folded the same way, pinned to the top ring, and the citron card gauge that keeps every pleat the same width.

In Mireille's words

On Pleating Silk by Hand

People ask why a pleated silk shade costs twice as much as a tailored one, and the honest answer is that it takes three times as long and I enjoy every minute of it. Each pleat is folded by hand against a card gauge, pinned at the top ring, then pinned again at the bottom, and on an empire the pleats have to fan, so each one is a little wider at the bottom than at the top, and if you lose count halfway round you find out at the very end, when the last pleat is either too fat or too thin and you take the whole side out and start again, which I have done more times than I would like to say, usually on a Friday afternoon with the radio on and the light going. I learned it in the costume workroom on the skirt of a dancer's dress, and a lampshade is easier, because it does not move.

Mireille

Materials

What the Shades Are Made Of

Shapes and fabrics are shown together on the new shades page.

Linen

Woven in northern France, in natural, white and a few soft colours. It glows warm and shows its weave when the lamp is lit.

Silk dupion and shantung

Slubbed silks that catch the light, used for tailored shades and for knife pleating.

Cotton lawn

A fine, smooth cotton that lets the most light through, mostly for linings and pale drums.

Cotton binding tape

Wound round every ring and strut before anything is sewn.

Lampshade card

Flame retardant card, bonded to the cloth for laminated drums and coolies that keep their shape.

What we turn away

Work the Workshop Turns Down

Each with its reason.

  1. Contract runs of more than 12 identical shades for hotels, restaurants or show homes.Two people sewing by hand cannot do them well and keep the queue moving for everyone else.
  2. Rewiring or electrical repairs to lamp bases.That is an electrician's job, and Mireille will point you to one nearby.
  3. PVC coated cloth, thin acrylics, or anything that scorches on the test iron.They yellow and smell near a bulb, and some are not safe there.
  4. Silk shades for bulbs hotter than a 40 W equivalent, or for any halogen bulb.Silk browns from the inside, and halogen bulbs run hot enough to mark it in weeks.
  5. Copying a protected designer shade line for line.A shade in the same spirit, sized to your lamp, is a different matter.
  6. Patching frames where the rings have rusted through.The frame is copied in new wire instead; there is more on what can be saved.
  7. Rush jobs promised in under 10 working days.Glue, steam and pleats all need time to settle, whatever the lead times say.

Next

Ready to Start?

A few photographs and three measurements are all the workshop needs to quote.