Altamira Lighting Hosts Studio Tour and Sale

Altamira Lighting Hosts Studio Tour and Sale
On the corner of Cutler and Joyce streets, behind the red and white bricks of a plain square building, eight artists design, mold, construct and hand-paint lamps and shades, one painstaking step at a time, to create Altamira lamps.

Through a side door and down a few steps, brightly colored oblong shapes of glass-like, cast resin sparkle against a mixed, metallic crown of small brass and pewter coin-sized plates.

Upstairs, seated in the soft shadows of a sun-filled afternoon, three painters with palate and brushes hover over designer fabric shades, adding color to geometric or leaf patterns, one light stroke at a time.

Altamira Lighting, which moved to Warren about seven years ago, has retail accounts which include stores in upscale areas like Martha's Vineyard and Wellfleet, in Massachusetts, and mid-town Manhattan. The lamps have been sold exclusively through the company's web-site, through trade shows, and at high-end retail shops.

But in July, the small industrial art company will open a showroom and retail store at its present location for the scores of people who stop by hoping to purchase the designer, hand-made lamps whose components, save one, which comes from Pennsylvania, are made solely in New England.