“I like my mental state best when I'm working with my hands,” says Ted Bradley, owner of his eponymous Boulder studio where he handcrafts porcelain light sculptures. “Some people can sit on a pillow and meditate. Others need to move their bodies to meditate. Working with clay in my hands is my meditation.”
Bradley, who studied ceramics and mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, launched Ted Bradley Studio in 2019. His work marries these two passions and sits effortlessly at the intersection of sculpture and light. With his debut Rings Collection, he introduced the world’s first porcelain light rings. The circular forms took 18 months of trial and error—with nearly 1,500 pounds of clay—to develop. Bradley’s subsequent Dome Collection lured him back to the pottery wheel, where he created an innovative twist on the traditional dome light fixture with concealed LED illumination that produces high-quality light output.
Both collections are available in many different series, like Mobile (domes suspended at varying heights), Nest (rings positioned to mimic the organized chaos of a bird’s nest), and Weighted Branch (rings designed to resemble branches weighed down by heavy snow). Bradley says that nature is his primary inspiration.
“I'm taking themes that I've seen in the mountains or the forest and abstracting them into a sculpture,” he shares. “A home is supposed to be where we unwind and relax, but it’s a bunch of straight lines and right angles. Nature breaks that up.” His Swag Pendants, offered in Dome and Ring designs, particularly reinforce this belief. “They have graceful, sweeping, exaggerated curves that don't shout, ‘Look at me! I need attention.’ But they do say, ‘I’m different.’”
Elevating his distinctive designs even further is Bradley’s new partnership with Lutron, the intelligent lighting technology brand behind revolutionary lighting applications around the world in hospitality, residential, retail and more. Clients can now choose between his studio’s standard custom LED bulbs (these score a 95 out of 100 on the Color Rendering Index, indicating extremely high quality that emulates natural daylight) or the Lutron integration upgrade.
“Imagine waking up in the morning, and all the light in your home is a warm glow, just like a sunrise,” Bradley says of the Lutron technology, which provides the ability to control a light sculpture’s color with a smartphone and voice command. “As you're having coffee, the color of the light starts to become brighter, more vibrant, lighter and bluer. It goes through the arc of the day towards sunset, when light becomes low again and more amber, like a fire.”
Every light sculpture Bradley makes is bespoke, crafted specifically for where it will be installed. He also mixes custom glazes in matte and gloss finishes to create hues like dusty rose, slate blue and royal plum, and crackled porcelain in bone, khaki and white. Over the past year, close to 200 homeowners, interior designers and architects—mostly from Colorado—have stopped by to tour the studio and order a unique piece. Each one takes between 10 to 12 weeks to produce, but it’s the meticulous artistry that clients appreciate most.
“They care not only about the aesthetic and the quality of the light in their space, but they also care about the story and feeling connected with artists in their community,” Bradley says. “We're connecting with people who care about more than just the object.”
Ted Bradley Studio
2907 55th St., Unit 6B, Boulder
720-460-9175
TedBradleyStudio.com