Carousel Lantern

To accompany the story for my first picture book ‘The Horse, the Stars & the Road’ published by Little Island, I wanted to make a lantern from copper. I became fascinated with tin and copper lanterns, which I had seen being made by one of Ireland’s last tinsmiths, at the Ballinasloe Horse Fair and at a Traveller Pride event.

I had never made anything from metal before but because a lantern was central to the story, I needed to get some idea of the skills a tinsmith would use to make such an object. I decided I would attempt to create a copper lantern and if it turned out well, I would incorporate it digitally into the illustrations-which are mostly pen and watercolour.

As I needed to get on with writing and illustrating the story-I couldn’t spend a huge amount of time developing new metalwork skills. I learned some new techniques necessary for the decorative elements and for the construction part-I fell back on my textile training. The lantern, featured in the book, is my own artistic interpretation of a carousel lantern which blends different techniques.

Just as in the story, when the carousel is lit from inside and placed in a dark room, it projects horses (from 10 side panels) and stars (from its roof). I used a planisphere so that I could replicate the constellations as accurately as possible-although the segments will distort it a little.

There is more detail on how it was created from ‘The Making of a Carousel Lantern’ which is featured on my publisher’s blog- https://www.littleisland.ie/blogs/blog/the-making-of-the-carousel-lantern