“Let There Be . . . StoneLight!”

Trent Shearn

the artist and designer of StoneLight Works custom light fixtures.

Trent Shearn was frustrated. Completely designing and building an 8,000-sq.-ft. mansion in California was a gargantuan project in itself, but it was nothing compared to the daunting task of finding just the right lighting fixtures.

“I'm a builder/contractor/ designer-type of guy,” explains the owner of StoneLight Works, located in Carmel, Calif. This multitask perspective allows Shearn to create one-of-a-kind designs for his clients that previously existed only in his mind's eye.

“If you can think it up, you can do it,” he states. Relying on his own imagination was exactly what Shearn had to do in order to provide spectacular lighting that would enhance the home's upscale lodge decor and surrounding wilderness environment.

First Shearn exhausted all of the lighting fixture resources he knew of in his search to find unusual fixtures that would complement this extraordinary house. “I couldn't find anything that was suitable,” he admits.

“I was unhappy with what I was finding in regard to lighting for rustic-style homes.”

Finally, Shearn put pencil to paper and drew up his own lighting design, creating fixtures that paired colorful beveled art glass in a distinctive Tiffany-like pattern with wrought iron. He then took his design to a glass supplier and an iron worker to bring the idea to life.

The finished product, an inverted pendant, has transitional, almost contemporary flair. The crowning touch is a piece of rock crystal as a bottom finial that subtly picks up the light shining down from the light source above. "I use clear quartz crystal, florite, amethyst, and citrine," he comments. “I also use agate in a stained glass treatment, hence the company name StoneLight Works.”

The most striking use of the inverted pendants was as a foyer fixture. Shearn extended the design theme to the entryway's dramatic stairwell, constructing an iron railing with matching florite jewels incorporated into the railing as decorative design elements that artistically unified the room.

The use of the inverted pendant as a foyer fixture has another benefit. "In the daytime, when the electric light is off, the sunlight comes through the glass of the foyer and throws prisms of light all over," Shearn explains. “It’s the beveled glass that causes that effect and lets you know that these fixtures are there. They are light sculptures: I like to call it architectural jewelry.”

The positive feedback from his first lighting design encouraged Shearn to offer his lighting designs to others. “I went out and started marketing the fixtures to the large ski resorts in the area," he says. The overwhelming reaction to his unusual lighting designs led to additional residential projects as well. "There are a lot of big, rustic homes being built in the Rockies right now.” Shearn notes.

Another one of his creative lighting designs is a two-light pendant where the fixtures are suspended from a wooden bracket shaped like an arrow. The arrowhead and the tail piece were made of blown glass by a friend of Shearn’s in Sante Fe and are illuminated with halogen spotlights. "I drilled out the log (the arrow part) and ran the wiring through it," he explains.

Shearn increased industry exposure to his lighting talents by exhibiting some of his designs at Lightfair International in San Francisco for the first time. Specifiers and architects attending the show were understandably impressed with StoneLight Works’ custom capabilities.

“A lot of people said we’re a breath of fresh air. Others say it is the most different and unique lighting they've seen at the show,” Shearn says. “My background is in architecture, but somehow I ended up being a builder and designer. The sculpture and the lighting is just a spin-off of the building aspect of my work,” he states. Sometimes it takes a craftsman outside of the lighting field to come up with a different perspective on illuminated design - and the popularity of StoneLight Works’ capabilities, as demonstrated at Lightfair, is proof.

- Linda Longo

Reprinted from August 1999 HOME LIGHTING & ACCESSORIES