Many years ago I was sitting looking at a styrofoam coffee cup, which is basically a conic section. I can;t remember what possessed me to do this, but I started cutting the coffee cups into rings about an inch deep and using paper clips to see how they went together.
The inner rings didn't work really well, but the largest rings, which were just a tad thicker than the rest of the cup, when paperclipped together, yielded a globe about 20 inches in diameter. The pattern was quite complex, since there were places where instead of six circles around a central circle the natural geometry of the circles required a pentagonal formation, much like the patterns you see on geodesic domes.
Eventually, I figured out that I could put a white globe light source in the middle of this larger globe, and I made several of them as lamps for friends of mine.
Mike Hill, when he moved from the DC area to (coincidentally) here in the Denver area, had one trashed during the shipment of his household goods and the moving company actually paid him $200 for the damage! And this was perhaps 25 years ago.
The things were actually quite attractive if you didn't get right up close to them, and made interesting hanging lights.
And everyone's wondering where the pun is. Sorry to disappoint you!
