Hayden Clay Williams Recasts Egg Cartons, Traffic Cones and Wet Floor Signs in Stained Glass

Three weeks of labor went into a single folding wet floor sign — assembled from golden glass, lead-free solder and zinc framing, with a working hinge that lets its two panels rotate through a limited angle. It is one of several works in which Hayden Clay Williams rebuilds mundane suburban objects in stained glass, a material more usually tied to decorative windows and Tiffany lamps. Egg Carton (Six Wells) is the most intricate: angular colored panes form a shallow tray with six recessed compartments, soldered joints tracing its ridges, and from above the piece reads as overlapping color and geometric pattern. Turquoise, amber and soft pink panels with silver-colored seams make up the carton, which scatters colored patches when sunlight passes through. A traffic cone follows the familiar tapering profile — broad square base, narrow top — in amber and copper sections broken by small diamond shapes; set beside a real cone, the shared geometry makes the contrast between street-durable plastic and breakable glass plain. The wet floor sign carries a slipping figure built from translucent pieces, so the object becomes vulnerable to the accident it warns against. Williams previously spent years on digitally rendered surreal suburban scenes, including the World Underwater series of flooded residential neighborhoods, and the glass works move those ideas off-screen into physical space.