Handcrafted Motorcycle Lamps: The Best Thing on Etsy

Vintage design, modern illumination.

byWill Sabel Courtney|
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Heads up, gearhead interior decorators and motorcycle enthusiasts with dimly lit residences! Are you looking for a new way of illuminating living or working spaces that combines the elegance of a vintage Vespa with the candlepower of a Crate & Barrel? Well, have we found the lamp for you!

Ron Popeil spiel aside—these lamps are actually really damn cool. Columbus, Ohio-based lampmaker The Modern Weld takes vintage scooter and motorcycle headlamp enclosures and lovingly transforms them into retro-modern works of art.While the exteriors of these reading lamps look old-fashioned, inside, the lights have been thoroughly gutted—rewired and outfitted with clean, crisp LED bulbs.

“It’s a restoration of a 60-year-old item, but it’s got the best of everything we can find,” The Modern Weld founder Matt Stewart told The Drive. After importing a Ukrainian headlamp for a personal motorcycle build, Stewart realized it would make a great floor lamp instead. When his friends saw it, they went nuts for it, and quickly began asking him to make more of them.

Etsy.com/TheModernWeld

That was a little more than a year ago, he said. Today, in addition to his Etsy store, Stewart has set up a website for the lamps, and is offering them through a select number of local retailers in the Columbus area.

“I’ve kind of been caught off-guard,” he said. “I spend more time scraping rust and polishing chrome than I ever thought.”

Right now, The Modern Weld has a selection of table, desk and floor lamps available on itsr Etsy page. Currently, the floor lights are 1960s-era Ural units harvested from Ukraine, while the table lamps come from Japanese motorcycles headlamp enclosures from the ’60s and the desk one is a 1970s-era scooter fixture. (Stewart also takes custom orders, so if you’ve been trying to figure out to do with your old Harley-Davidson that’s rusted itself into a single piece, pry off the headlight and send it his way.)

That said, if you’re still in the buy-everything-at-IKEA phase of your life and thus not quite ready to drop several hundred dollars on handmade lighting fixtures, you can still follow The Modern Weld on Instagramto scope out its selection of current and upcoming motor vehicle-inspired lighting fixtures, as well as see many of its custom projects.

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