Sunset at Cape May Light is made of 212 individual pieces. Each of the three sections measures 11.5” x 155/8”. Finished with frame and hooks it measures 14 1/4” x 57”. It contains 27 different colors of glass including waterglass, artique, striated, cathedral, quarter reed, seedy, and prismatic glass. Some very special pieces of glass include the gold infused cranberry glass that is the sun and the gridded prismatic glass that makes up the “light” part of the light house. The moon is an almost opalescent milky white that literally glows against the sunset.
The look and feel of this piece is based on vintage Cape May postcards with a modern graphic use of color and form.
A little bit about Cape May Lighthouse…
The Lighthouse was built in 1859 and continues in operation to this day. It was first lighted on Halloween of that year. It is the third fully documented lighthouse to be built at Cape May Point. The first was built in 1823; the second in 1847.The exact locations of the first two lighthouses are now underwater due to erosion.
The current lighthouse was built from bricks salvaged from the 1847 structure. There are 199 steps to the top of the Lighthouse. The view from the top extends to Cape May City and Wildwood to the north, Cape May Point to the south, and, on a clear day, Cape Henlopen, Delaware, to the west. Within immediate view are Cape May Cove and Battery 223, a harbor defense battery originally built during World War II.
Cape May Lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1973.
There are so many poems and stories about lighthouses but this one felt the most right…
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others…and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
- Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
