Initial Render Performance Tests. Mine is not a super-high-performance laptop, so I hope this won’t be crippling down the line. Time will tell.
Stem added. I also added an inset of zero on the bottom and top faces of the stem to make the smooth shading a bit more accurate. Just a tip in case it is relevant to anyone else (and a reminder for me in the future 
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Went a little different direction on the bottom arm. I like machined flats on cylinders, so that’s how the base meets the rectangular arm.
Bones for bottom of lamp in place, and bottom arm (and parent bone) rotated 45 degrees.
Top arm added and constrained.
This took a ridiculous amount of time, possibly because I was doing it wrong? Will start a new thread on this to get a better understanding and maybe help others.
Lampshade added and rigged now. I added a tiny, fixed bone to offset the shade from the upper arm. Not sure if it is necessary or if it will cause problems, but we will see.
Also, I already converted my lampshade to a mesh object, so it will not be connected to the lampshade curve. Mike’s way (making the bone parent to both curves instead of making a single solid) may be better because it would allow me to edit the shade later on as needed. Filing that away mentally for other models.
Lots of fun here. I made a bunch of materials, but finally settled on two main ones. The lamp has a highly-reflective bronze arm set and a paintlike purple base and shade, with a white surface for the lampshade interior.
Result after an approximately 4-hour render. My catlike lamp playing with a ball.
By the way, to embed a YouTube video here, do not use the embed code you get from the “share” portion of the video. Just copy and paste the complete video URL on a single line, no spaces or content before or after. Rob mentioned this previously here, but I want to spread the information as much as possible because it took me a good 10-15 minutes to finally RTFM and get it right. 
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