When I started Lambda, I was a novice to business and product promotion. I was adventurous and committed. Here are some of the first product promotion tools that I had done. The first printers were Ampersand of Guelph and photographer by the name of Lewis in Guelph.
The first company was a numbered company, which was cheaper to establish. The name Lambda came as a result of me taking physics at UofG. The Greek letter Lambda is used in the formula denoting wavelength of light. Because leaded crystal breaks up white light into its component wavelengths – colours, that is how the rainbows are created. White light strikes the lead and bounces off. As it does, the colour traveling the fastest, that is, the shortest wavelength, reflects first, followed by the next shortest wavelength. That is how lead crystal can take while light, which we don’t see, and turns it into colours. It is magical to me. It is also the first things babies see; flashes of colour. Hand a crystal over a babies crib and watch the baby become mesmerized by the lights.
I have not lost the ability and guts to try new things in my life and hope I hold onto that adventurous side into the next existence. I came up with the first figurines while preparing orders for basic crystal prisms. I put a couple of pieces together and thought, that looks like a little mouse. I remember using a black felt tip pen to mark the eyes and nose. I used some crazy glue to put the first one together. I needed some whiskers so I found a jeweler in Elora, ON who sold me silver wire, drawn to a smaller diameter in order to glue three pieces together through the hole to look like whiskers. Once I had one creation, I needed more to create a line of figurines. I shortly came up with City Mouse, Country Mouse, Church Mouse, Dormouse, Castle Cat, Crusader Rabbit, Flying Crusader Rabbit. These became the first crystal figurines manufactured in N. America. Later on, Swarovski sued a company in the US saying they had copied their idea. I was summoned to fly to Washington DC to provide an affidavit which proved that I was the first in N. America. Swarovski had to pay the US company damages and apologize. That company had actually stolen my designs and admitted it. Very interesting history. This would have been in 1978-79 that I created them.
