Meanwhile at Potter Art Metal Studios...

the projects are exciting, as always...
so... there's one thing to do... I'm going to give you a personal tour of our latest!

Here you see the middle tier of a
three tier chandelier I
recently designed for a client.

This is a pair of sliding gates I designed for a Texas Ranch.

And this is a chandelier for a private residence.
The Designers showed us what they wanted
and we made it, but Better :)

written by:  Izabela Wojcik

Your personal ornamental metalwork and lighting designer

at Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, TX.

Whimsy Dragonfly Walk Gates - It's all about the organic look!

I have always loved designing organic pieces of ornamental metalwork and lighting, especially of the whimsy variety; just because it's so much fun! ...so when my White Rock Elementary School Teacher, alongside her landscape designer Alison M. Betz, waltzed in through our doors asking for two little organic style walk gates, I was over the moon!  (for all the reasons mentioned above, and more)
I have not seen her in sooo many years, yet she recognized me right away... I was shocked!  It was one of the most memorable moments ever!

We looked through our books and she pointed to a design she really liked.  I took the components she was absolutely in love with and designed exactly what she was looking for.  In the creation of the design, I had to keep in mind that her two adorable powder puffs (she has two beautiful Bichon Frisé girls) could't practice at their escape artist ways, so I added plenty of scrolls toward the bottoms of the gates.  The bushes will actually grow taller and cable wire will be stretched between the two gates so that the pups can't escape.   We then decided that a dragonfly would be a perfect addition to the wrought iron gate design, and she asked if the wings could be made of glass.  I also added a cute little bug wondering around one of the stems.

And voilà!  A whimsy design full of organic wonder was born!

written by:  Izabela Wojcik

Your personal ornamental metalwork and lighting designer

at Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, TX.

An XClussive Garage to Die For!

I've seen some pretty impressive homes with quite the impressive garages attached to them, but Lamond Jack of XClussiveGarage certainly takes custom luxury garage design to the next level!  On top of his gigantic, ultra elaborate garages, he's currently working on two parking spaces in Brooklyn NY.

This sounds like absolutely not a big deal, right?  Well, the two parking spaces inside the Brooklyn condominium building are going to get quite the treatment!  Venetian plaster, limestone stamped overlay on concrete, crown moldings, artwork on the walls, our beautiful lanterns, and the list just keeps going...  My job? Designing the ornamental metal partition which will protect the contents of the parking spaces, plus two gates, behind which Lamond's client will safely park his exotic cars.

UPDATE!
Great news!  Lamond loved my design, but the gates still have to be approved by the condominium board... we're all keeping our fingers, toes, legs and eyes crossed!  I'm really excited about the entire idea!  Plus, Lamond put a huge smile on my face when he wrote "...If they don't then we will submit it to other clients.  I would hate to see a Wojcik design not be produced! too beautiful!"

Here is the before:

Here is a taste of what will happen happen in the space:

And hopefully, soon, I will post the actual space!

Before you go, I've got some eye candy for you by XClussive Garage:

written by:  Izabela Wojcik

Your personal ornamental metalwork and lighting designer

at Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, TX.

Love finding our metalwork on Houzz.com

I love Houzz.com
Houzz happens to be one of my all time favorite places online.  I love it so much that I actually invited Liza Houzman over to our studio when she was in town.  (Didn't work out so well for me because I ended up sick in bed with the flu, but heyyy... at least everyone else at the studio got to say hello.)

In any case, I was surfing Houzz the other day and happened across this gorgeous photo by Harold Leidner, a Dallas landscape architect, which shows off his wonderful landscape architecture, and also happened to catch the drive gate and exterior lanterns I designed for the property and which we custom forged for our client.

I clicked on it, and all these other fabulous photos started popping up... so, I thought I'd share them with you.

Mediterranean Landscape by Dallas Landscape Architect Harold Leidner Landscape Architects.  Custom ornamental metalwork and lighting by Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas.  The interior designer on the project was Kelli Otey.

Here is a photo which captured the copper and wrought iron gas lanterns I custom designed for the Mediterranean style estate.

We also designed and forged this exterior wrought iron chandelier.

And this shot shows a peak of the beautiful tail lanterns which we matched to the rest of the exterior lighting.



Of course we made a whole lot more for the home, but it sure was fun to see bits and pieces here and there on Harold's Houzz page.

written by Izabela Wojcik
Your personal ornamental metalwork and lighting designer at Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, TX.

Ornamental Metalwork for Drexel

We are currently working with Provenance Builders on a home remodel in the Park Cities, which reminded me of another pretty home they did on Drexel, in Dallas.

The home had lots of original Potter Art Metal Studios' ornamental metalwork, which was very exciting, since at the time Richard Potter's grandfather, Henry Potter, was The Go To Guy for beautiful ironwork and lighting around town.  It's so nice to see family history still in tact.

What we like about Provenance is that even though they completely remodel old homes, they also manage to keep everything that made the home special in the first place, plus what ever they add-on looks as if it was always there.

For the Drexel home, we restored all the old light fixtures, etc, but also designed and built new pieces, which we based on the original metalwork and lighting.  The home is adorned with lovely lanterns, gates, etc..  Next time you drive down Drexel, take a look and see how the old and the new can seamlessly fit together.

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Elegant Wrought Iron Gates and Fence: Before and After

New Fence, Gate, and Lanterns by Potter Art Metal Studios

You'd be surprised what a difference a new wrought iron gate and fence can do for your property.  I even have a before and after photo to help illustrate my point.

I loved designing the new custom made wrought iron gates (with solid brass details), fence and brass lighting for a residential building off Sherry Lane and Douglas, in Dallas.  Our client wanted a new and fabulous look for his two entrances, and so we jumped right in!  It was a great opportunity to make some really nice,  large scale, and heavy gates.  The pair of gates on one side of the multi-story building open in and the one pictured above is actually a slider which we made look like a matching pair; I thought they would look much more grand and inviting this way.  The lanterns have matching wrought iron brackets with a beautiful solid brass body.  They are proportioned to the existing posts.

wrought iron fencing matching the gates

The fence is actually quite simple, but very effective.  I love the elegant scrolls on the top; we made sure that all the scrolls were forged to a tip and had a lovely flow to them; otherwise the effect would not work and the fence would look like any off the shelf fencing out there.

Original Gate we replaced.

The original gate was too light weight and did not have much of an actual design; it was your regular off the shelf looking gate.  Because the building itself looks quite commercial, the gate did also.  Our client's visitors would constantly mistake the building for a commercial one and drive right past it; he wanted an impressive entrance so that all he'd have to say is "You'll know you're there when you see the gates."  ...and he got exactly what he wanted.

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Pine Tree Wrought Iron Gate

Seems like everyone wants an organic design for their lake house these days.  Here is a design I drew up for a 7 acre property entrance.  If you look up close, you can see that the gates will split in the middle.  The lake house is surrounded by pine trees, hence the name, PineKnot.  The columns will be forged out to look like tall pine stumps, and the  gates themselves will look like shorter branches of the trees.  We will also forge out the pine needles and a few pine cones.  The entire design will be custom forged out in wrought iron.  We will also custom design and produce the matching electric lanterns which will hang on the tree stump limbs on either side of the gate.  The final look will  be quite whimsy and artistic; very unusual, which is what we were going for.  Can't wait to see it in metal.

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Wrought Iron Tree Gates

Another one of my designs we forged out right here
at Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, Tx.

A lot of our clients are looking for something unusual, but they have no idea where or how to get what they want.  I recently had a client who has been looking for someone to design and make a tree gate, but all she kept finding is metal shops where she'd be given a bunch of catalogs to look through and piece together what she wanted.  Almost all of the ironwork shops out there buy off the shelf materials and splice them together; this is why you can alway tell which metalwork comes right off the shelf.  We actually like to start from scratch and forge out what ever is necessary for the completion of a design, no matter how complicated.  The tree gate was actually sort of a funny story, because we just finished working on the tree gates pictured above, so she had something to look at and get inspired by right here in our showroom... on top of all the other pieces and textures we make and have in house that is.  The texture of the tree is very realistic, and hammered out by hand; makes for an impressive functional work of art.

Wrought Iron tree gate I designed for one of our clients.

We can design and forge out your custom wrought iron gates in any material, size and style.  We are located in Dallas, Texas and have clients all over the country, so installation is not a problem.  Potter Art Metal Studios is a fully functional design and custom metalwork fabricating studio.


written by: Izabela Wojcik

All the detail in the gates...

The lanterns are finally hanging on either side of the gates we forged a while ago for one of our clients!  We designed and custom made both, of course.  Our client wanted them to be totally, naturally, rusted... which was an interesting process in itself.
Here is the final look, but what I really wanted to show off is all the detail we put into the gates before we rusted them; so beautiful.

Gates designed and forged by Potter Art Metal Studios.

Gas lanterns; copper and brass mix.

What's so special about Potter Art Metal Studios?  It's all in the details.  Take a look at just about anything out there and then take a second glance.  See the difference?  We love the beauty of metal and what can be done with it... the way it feels to the touch and how the brain processes the textures and colors.  Plus, if you don't do it right, why do it at all?  The wonderful, hand worked pieces are slowly disappearing, being taken over by pre-fabricated pieces which hurt my eyes... it's such a shame!

Lantern detail

Gate detail: rusting process starting

Gate detail: rusting process continues

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Wow! Building Big Drive Gates...

Can you do big gates?  A client asked me the other day.

Of course we can!

This made me think of the European style slider gates we did across the street from the The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas.

European style slider gate design by Potter Art Metal Studios

I opened the file on my computer and went down memory lane...

See the little spears on top of the gates?  Now look at what
I'm holding... not so little after all...

The giant wrought iron gates and fence were custom designed and hand forged with nothing but love.  I love the metal columns too... most of the time you'll see stone ones, but wrought iron is so unusual.  All of the spears, rosettes, acanthus leaves, double hammered banding, and other details, like the flames of the urns, were cast in brass and polished.  We are super proud of them. 

Can we build large gates? Check!

So today I'm designing a brand new, beautiful, grand gate for the client...

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Pretty in French: Lanterns & Gate

Since we drove out to a client's house in Tyler, Texas, we decided to stop at his neighbor's home and snap a few photos of the gates and lanterns we custom made for them a while ago.  ...And what perfect timing, now that all the bushes and such have grown in and everything looks so pretty.

French style custom wrought iron drive gates; Tyler Tx.

French style custom gas lanterns; copper and brass.

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Getting ready for Gate Installation

It was such a pleasure designing these drive gates; can't wait to see them up.  The guys worked really hard forging each scroll and knocker, each decorative hinge, down to the smallest details like the hammer heads.  And this is only one of the two, custom designed and built, beautiful wrought iron gates crowning the entrance of a gorgeous Coppel home.  If you like this style, check out Kelli Otey; she's the interior designer for the owners.
_______________________________________________
UPDATE:
The gates are getting hung!  Now the columns have to be finished out and we'll get our lights put up on the fronts of them.  A few touchups, adjustments, the sand will be swept away to reveal the lovely cobblestone driveway and everything will look so beautiful.

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Final Touches on the Wrought Iron Gates & Gas Lanterns

So exciting! We are finally doing the last touch-ups on the gate, and I have to say it looks spectacular.  It's 12' tall!  (If you click on the photo, you'll see a larger version of it where you can see men standing behind the right panel of the gate, for scale.)  The owner tells us that people constantly stop by his home, get out of the car, start taking photographs and ask who did it.  Talk about a complement!

We also made the fabulous gas lanterns on the face of the columns and on the house.  The bodies are made of heavy duty solid copper, with solid brass cast acanthus leaves and wrought iron brackets... We like to build beautiful things which will stick around for generations to come :)

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Wrought Iron Gates

Finishing a pretty new pair of wrought iron drive gates.  We also did another matching pair of straight top gates for the same home, two pedestrian entry gates, and two small garden gates.  Plus I designed a really cool gazebo top that matches the lattice work on all the gates, plus has some really neat design-work around the bottom perimeter which was taken from the stonework design around the house; hope we get to do it... it would be a real challenge. 

written by: Izabela Wojcik

Wrought Iron Drive Gates

I have been so busy lately that I have not had time to keep up with the blog; today I found a really good reason to.  This is just half of the two sides of the drive gates we are currently making.  All custom, all fabulous!  The guys have been working non-stop to get these finished up for the client; every single scroll was forged to a tip and scrolled by hand.  The gates were designed by Richard Drummond Davis, who is a wonderful local architect.  We decided to use larger material sizes; not easy to forge out, but it's wort it.  Can't wait to get the finished photo; they will be so impressive!