It’s tempting to call Robert Brown a disco ball artist. Except he’s never actually created a simple ball.
“This all began with a disco squirrel,” Brown says of his first commission in 2017. “I was a metal sculptor at the time and was approached by this company about making a disco ball squirrel holding a bottle. Things just kind of grew from there.”
Since the spawn of that boozy squirrel, Brown has created dozens of custom-made mirrored ornaments from his studio in Louisville, Kentucky: a disco pig for a local BBQ joint, a bejeweled LP for a nearby record shop, disco chickens for a restaurant in Texas, a trio of disco jellyfish, and a sparkly three-foot-tall rocket ship. He even crafted a life-size disco saddle. “I had to get a waiver on that one,” Brown says. “I mean, it’s made of glass. If someone sits on it…”
It’s no accident that a custom disco ball artist would find his niche in Louisville. Alongside the city’s many popular nicknames—Bourbon City, Derby City, Gateway to the South—is also Glitter Ball City, owing to Louisville’s history as the world’s largest producer of disco balls.
“Mirror balls” first came on the scene in the late 1800s, when homeowners hung reflective ceiling-mounted ornaments to magnify light in dim, candle- and gas-lit buildings. But the glittering orbs really experienced their heyday in the 1970s, when Soul Train and Saturday Night Fever popularized “disco balls,” elevating them to must-have status at discotheques, dance parties, and skating rinks.
That was good news for the Louisville furniture and mirror manufacturer Omega Mirror Products, which owned the patent to the disco ball. They have shipped thousands of handcrafted globes all around the world, making Louisville the disco ball capital of the world then—and now. If disco has fallen out of favor, disco balls continue to be popular among interior designers and nostalgia-seekers.
Omega remains the sole supplier of glass disco balls in the United States, which worked in Robert Brown’s favor when Lush Life decided to order a sparkling disco squirrel. From his backyard studio in Louisville’s Clifton neighborhood—which happens to be located less than two miles from Omega—Brown begins his flashy creations by bending and welding steel dowels into the buyer’s preferred shape. Once the work’s substructure is complete, he covers the metalwork with layers of papier-mâché, sculpting details into the wet coating.
The artist then covers the dried layers of paper with mirrored tiles acquired from Omega. The half-inch glass pieces are carefully arranged to give the piece added texture, contour, and artistry: the curve of a horse’s flank, the swoop of a chicken’s wing, the swirl of a bushy tail.
There’s a rumor that Omega Mirror Products’ last remaining disco ball maker, Yolanda Baker, may retire soon. Has Brown thought about taking her place? “After making disco squirrels and horses and rocket ships, I don’t know,” Brown says. “I think I might get bored making a plain old sphere.” (Besides, no one can ever really replace Baker, a Louisville legend.)
“It’s one thing to craft the piece, to build the cage and place the mirror pieces and do the grunt work,” Brown says. “But when the piece is all finished and I can hang it from the ceiling, turn the lights out, and put a spotlight on the piece, it’s magical. The light just goes crazy. It’s really cool.”
Brown is currently at work creating a giant disco coronavirus model (picture a mirrored orb with red spikes jutting out), a pair of glittering ducks modeled after his son’s rubber duckie, and a disco tooth that will rotate and sparkle in a local dentist’s office.
“Once you start covering things with these tiles, you never stop seeing the possibilities,” he says. “I just picked up this antique baby buggy and I found myself thinking, ‘That would look pretty cool as a disco ball.’”
