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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Clarksville

Musical instruments get second life as custom lamps

Allan Smith’s crafted lamps from old musical instruments are shown at Chase Middle School, where Smith’s favorite collector, band teacher Gail Phillips, teaches and keeps many of his works. (Jesse Tinsley)
Allan Smith’s crafted lamps from old musical instruments are shown at Chase Middle School, where Smith’s favorite collector, band teacher Gail Phillips, teaches and keeps many of his works. (Jesse Tinsley)

Welcome, reader friends, to Clarksville, a place not only of sight and sound, but of mind - a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries...
No, wait a second. That's the Twilight Zone. 
Clarksville will be populated with some of the interesting characters that I run into from time to time. Here, I'll be able to tell their stories more fully, beyond the normal confines of my thrice-weekly column.

 

 

Deep inside Hoffman Music Co., Spokane’s venerable music store that cracked the century mark in 2013, is an oversized closet that few customers ever see.

Staffers at the 1430 N. Monroe St. store call it the “junk room,” but it’s really more of a graveyard, a place where instruments go to die.

Or dead instruments go to hang.

A thick row of trombones dangles off a wall, butting up against a jumble of curvy gold saxophones. Trumpets and cornets crowd another wall, almost too many to count.

A lone bass clarinet perches horizontally on a cramped space above the door. Drawers contain flutes, clarinets and assorted bits and pieces.

Allan Smith, the 56-year-old manager of Hoffman’s band department and instrument repair shop, reaches into the metallic mass and pulls out half of what used to be an alto sax.

“Here’s one that’s been well picked over,” he says with a laugh, holding it aloft.

The instruments here have hit the end of the road. They’re either worn out, too expensive to fix or busted beyond repair.

Like derelict autos in a wrecking yard, some of the Hoffman heaps can be mined for parts. But for almost five years now, many of these worthless horns and woodwinds have found new life as lovely one-of-a-kind lamps that Smith creates in his home garage.

“It’s just a lot of fun,” he says. “But I like keeping it on my own terms.”

So far Smith has made 75 instrument lamps, each one flying out the door not long after being displayed. (Prices range from $285 to $650.)

Smith sold 18 lamps the first time he put them up for sale.

Once in awhile, like the floor lamp he created out of a gorgeous dark bassoon, the artist can’t bear to part with a finished product.

Smith quickly decided that the only place this lamp was going was into his own home. “These creations are as much objet d’art as functional lighting devices.

Smith painstakingly hides the rods and electrical parts that go into a lamp. He also mounts whatever instrument he’s using on a wood base that Smith has turned and polished to glossy perfection.

“Finding the right wood is almost more fun than making the lamp,” he says before rattling off a string of materials he’s used, like ambrosia maple, black walnut, Mexican bocote, cocobolo, palm …

“He’s amazing,” declares Gail Phillips of Smith’s instrument lamps. “Who would ever think to do that?”

Phillips directs the music programs at Chase Middle School on Spokane’s South Hill. More to the point, she is also Smith’s best customer, having bought 10 of his lamps including a violin, trumpets, a silver G bugle with two valves and a conjoined saxophone/trombone creation that Smith calls his “Saxabone.”

Phillips remembers the day several years ago that she walked into the Hoffman band department and saw several of Smith’s lamps set up on counters.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

“Oh my gosh,” she uttered. “They’re awesome.”

Once Phillips found out that they were for sale she set about putting her own lamp band together.

“They’re inspirational. They’re decorative. I couldn’t spare one of them, she says, adding with a chuckle, “Sometimes they even come with a light bulb.”

The sizable saxobone and two others went straight to her lake cabin.

Four others became home fixtures. Phillips used her piccolo trumpet lamp as the centerpiece on her Christmas dining table.

Phillips took the remaining three lamps into the Chase band arena, putting the trombone floor lamp in the practice room.

A trumpeter, Phillips is a bundle of gregarious energy. It’s no wonder she has a thriving program. The Chase Chargers marching band, if you didn’t know, won last year’s Junior Lilac Parade.

So what do the kids think of her lamps?

“At first they just stared and asked, ‘Are those real instruments?’ ”

“Then they asked if they could touch the valves. They’ve been really respectful.”

Creating lamps out of old musical instruments was a natural for Smith.

He’s the son of Earl Smith, who began working at Hoffman as a high school student back in 1950. Smith the elder inched his way up to becoming one of the owners when the store incorporated in the 1960s.

Allan, too, started working at Hoffman as a kid. He began by doing odd jobs for Bill Grafmiller, another owner, who eventually taught Allan the instrument repair trade.

About 10 years ago, Allan was visiting Doug Bendewald, a family friend, longtime musician and fine woodworker.

Bendewald asked Allan if he’d like to try to turn a piece of wood on the lathe in his workshop. So he gave it a whirl. When he finished, Allan had created a nice and evenly turned bowl.

Allan still remembers the words that came out of the impressed man’s mouth.

“You may be in the wrong business.”

Smith the younger was hooked. He began acquiring the requisite tools needed to create beautiful objects from wood. A lathe. A bandsaw. A drill press. A face planer …

So it’s really no mystery how a woodworker with access to old instruments found himself making unique lamps.

Not everybody was happy at first. One Hoffman repairman, in fact, told Smith, “I hate what you’re doing to these instruments.”

Smith, however, is more pragmatic.

If the instrument doesn’t work or would cost too much to fix, why not give it a second life as “a conversation piece or as something people can enjoy?”

It certainly makes sense to Phillips.

Last Wednesday afternoon, she was negotiating to have Smith make her lamp No. 11. And this time, Phillips will supply her own instrument – a non-working xylophone.

A xylophone?

“I’ll bring it down to Hoffman so you can look at it,” said Phillips to the Lamp Man. “It has wheels so I can roll it from inside the cabin to outside on the porch. Oh, yeah. It’ll be awesome.”



Doug Clark
Doug Clark joined The Spokesman-Review in 1982. He is a columnist whose columns appear on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.