Cartwright New York
Cartwright is a New York-based glass lighting studio. Each piece is handmade in Brooklyn, New York using centuries-old Venetian glassblowing techniques. The studio exists at the intersection of material tradition and creative intent, where molten glass becomes form, and form becomes light.
The practice
Every Cartwright fixture begins as raw soda-lime glass, heated in a furnace and shaped by hand on the blowpipe. There is no moulding. No casting. Each component is formed through controlled breath, gravity, and direct contact between glassworker and material.
Metal frameworks are fabricated in-house—brass, blackened steel, bronze—hand-finished and assembled with the glass. The studio controls each stage of production: forming, annealing, cutting, polishing, wiring, and final assembly. Nothing is outsourced. The result is a practice in which every surface, every joint, and every proportion is deliberately decided.
Light as material
Cartwright does not make lighting fixtures. Cartwright shapes light itself. Glass is the medium through which illumination is filtered, softened, fractured, and directed. The studio thinks in terms of glow rather than brightness, diffusion rather than output, and atmosphere rather than specification.
Each piece is conceived as an intervention in space—a presence that modulates how a room feels at dusk, how a corridor draws the eye, how a dining table holds its intimacy. The proportions are considered not in isolation but in relation to ceiling height, wall material, and the quality of natural light a room already possesses.
New York, from Venice
The studio is based in New York. The techniques are Venetian. This is not a contradiction but a lineage—one that connects the glassmaking traditions of Murano to the architectural ambition of a city that demands precision, scale, and material honesty.
Cartwright works with the understanding that craft is not nostalgia. It is the application of accumulated knowledge to present conditions. The studio draws on generations of glassworking intelligence while responding to the spatial and aesthetic demands of contemporary architecture and design.
Made to order
Every Cartwright piece is made to order. There is no warehouse inventory, no stock production, no compromise of scale for the sake of efficiency. Each commission begins with a conversation—about space, about intention, about the specific conditions in which the work will exist.
The studio collaborates with architects, interior designers, and private clients on finish selections, dimensional adjustments, and installation requirements.
