You, You Light Up My Life

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I know a lot of you are city dwellers. You might not have garages, or cars for that matter. But here, in Kansas City, we are mostly suburbanites and most of us have a garage. I know the idea is to put your car in there, but mine is mostly stuffed with lawn equipment, bicycles, boxes of stuff to be left out for a needy cause and things that are forever lost because they are in the scary part in the back.

Kansas Citian, Barbara Cosgrove, didn’t use her garage for her car either. Ten years ago she took her art background and turned it into a profitable business making lamps. In her garage.


Needless to say, Cosgrove is standing among dried leaves no more. She currently has two lines of lamps; The Collection offers a variety of styles and choice of shades while the BCL line is less expensive with a pre-determined shade.
Frankly, I think are the lamps are stylish and pretty reasonable priced. The Collection models are $200 – $600, while the BCL line runs $140 – $170.

The lamps are available “in town” at Hall’s, Black Bamboo, High Cotton Home Furnishings and Noel’s.


Those of you not in our fair city can pick them up through Nieman-Marcus, Gump’s and Horchow.



Recently, Cosgrove has expanded into accent pieces and some furniture.

I purchased a tortoise shell a couple of months ago, and while I adore it, it concerns me that demand could create an unfortunate situation. These are very pretty, and resin, so you could sleep easy.

There is a bit of this going around. I think it would be fabulous painted white if you want to channel a little Hadley. I just got a bid for a client to powder coat an old bed. $125. For the headboard and foot board. So something like this would be…I don’t know, but less.

This would be a jazzy little breakfast tray, no? You could lay about in your satin bed jacket having toast and tea, planning a business you could start in your garage.

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5 thoughts on “You, You Light Up My Life”

  1. Maybe that’s what has been holding me back from starting something of my own…I don’t have a garage!

  2. How nice to be an entrepreneur in the design trade. I keep waiting for spark of inspiration to push me in that direction. Do love the lamps–especially the sriped candle covers (or whatever that part of the lamp is called). I can see why she is hitting the big time with that kind of attention to detail. Very cool.

  3. Great lamps! I think I especially like the three shown in the 6th picture. They look old and a bit industrial.

  4. The tortoise shells reminded me of sconces friends made out of found horse-shoe crab shells. They were amazing!

  5. I’d like to chalk it all up to an over-full garage,but I don’t think that is my problem.

    Fairfax – I would love to see a picture of those sconces – and I am not being polite. I really, really would – they sound fabulous.

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