Friday, February 9, 2007
I just watched a skit on a video making fun of crystal chandeliers. Everyone in my office was amused by it, since we’re in the business of marketing crystal chandeliers. The president of Schonbek enjoyed it so much, he distributed it widely by email!

What better proof of the fame and iconic stature of the crystal chandelier than a spoof on network TV?

Heads of state are at the mercy of cartoonists. Wildly rich people get kidded about their haircuts. Rock stars come in for their share of ridicule. As someone once said about mockery from the media, “Just get my name right.”

So yes, nobody ever said it would be easy to live with the magnificence of a richly trimmed crystal chandelier. But if you already possess a much loved, beautifully furnished home that others will admire and possibly envy, you might as well have the pleasure of living with crystal.

I couldn’t help noticing that the crystal chandeliers in the skit were the most conventional sort. Schonbek has responded to the resurgent popularity of crystal chandeliers by reinventing the form, over and over again. You can have a Schonbek, if you wish, that’s exactly what you’d expect of a crystal chandelier. With a history going back centuries, Schonbek knows better than anyone how to render the classics. But you can also break with tradition and choose a Schonbek with a completely unexpected personality.

Schonbek always works with crystal. That’s what defines the company. But crystal has become an almost new material in the hands of Schonbek.

Genesis, for example, exhibits a foliate framework with mysterious fruit in the form of colored crystal droplets. The rock crystal sphere at the finial point is wonderfully whimsical.   No crystal chandelier going before it even vaguely resembled Genesis.

Florentine is not at all magnificent, but rather feminine and romantic. The slender arms and dainty crystal evoke feelings of nostalgia. You’ve never seen a crystal chandelier quite like this, though you may feel you dreamed it.

Vendome makes a statement with just a few crystal ornaments, and these are rock crystal gemstones of great antiquity. Glitz is not in the picture.

Jasmine uses the crystal chandelier as a reference point, and then departs dramatically from the concept. It's a crystal chandelier distilled to the very essence of the form.

If you favor charm over brilliance, mystery over magnificence, you can still indulge in a Schonbek crystal chandelier. And you’re very unlikely to see it spoofed on TV!

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Part of the fun of choosing a crystal chandelier is choosing the frame finish.

This doesn’t always apply. If you choose Genesis, for example, the chandelier comes in only one finish, because only one finish is absolutely perfect for this design. And if you choose an all-crystal chandelier with a crystal frame, there is no finish. The body, arms and scrolls are entirely crystal. In some cases, you may need to specify whether you want an inner frame of gold or silver, according to the tonality you want the crystal to take on. But that’s a pretty simple decision.

If you choose a chandelier with many finish options, then it gets interesting.

See the finishes page on this website. But don’t take the images too literally. Colors on the web are not reliable. There will be color differences from one monitor to the next. You can request a brochure on finishes from Schonbek, or pick one up at an authorized Schonbek dealer, but even a brochure will not be entirely accurate. Most Schonbek finishes are exceedingly rich and complex. Photography can’t do them justice. And printing presses have their limits in conveying reality.

The best thing to do is to visit a showroom that carries Schonbek. They’ll have actual finish samples to show you. And you can cruise around the showroom and see how the various finishes look on complete crystal chandeliers.

But in the meantime, you might find it helpful to read the descriptions of the finishes on this website. Sometimes a few pointed works can be worth a thousand pictures, if photography can’t capture the complexity of a finish.

Heirloom Bronze, for example, has tremendous depth and a darkly mysterious sheen. I never really appreciated this finish until I specified it for the crystal chandelier and sconces in my bathroom. I made my choice on the basis of a photo, and then the real thing astonished and delighted me.

Etruscan Gold is another finish that looks best in person. A photo can’t do justice to the air of antiquity that infuses this highly refined finish.

So if you’re looking at finishes on this website, be sure to click on the images to read the descriptions. And then visit a Schonbek dealer, so you can see and handle the finishes! The handling is important, too, because Schonbek finishes have wonderful texture. Heirloom Bronze, for instance, is silky smooth, whereas Etruscan Gold is a bit rough, like the surface of an antique that’s had some stressful experiences over the centuries.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

I’m reading a novel set in the twelfth century. Quite often I come across mentions of crystal chandeliers in novels. Authors use them to create atmosphere or to establish a certain character as aristocratic. But there are no crystal chandeliers in this book, because there were none in the Middle Ages. One more reason for calling this period the Dark Ages!

Crystal chandeliers first appeared in the sixteenth century. In a sense they were part of the artistic achievements of the Renaissance. Artists were escaping the flat world of the past and exploring perspective. Poetry and music were undergoing a rebirth. And clever minds everywhere were enthusiastically coming up with new ideas, one of which was to hang refractive faceted crystal on chandeliers. This had the effect of magnifying the weak light of candles. There was a brilliance to the new era that seemed to require more light.

I suspect people went to bed pretty early in the Middle Ages, especially in winter. We may find candlelight romantic today, but groping about by candlelight and torchlight could not have been easy. Better to sleep through the dark hours and get up with the sun.

But the opulent new chandeliers heavily laden with crystal encouraged night life. They offered the ideal lighting for balls and banquets. Of course only the wealthy and powerful could afford crystal chandeliers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

The taming of electricity for practical use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries might have been the end of crystal chandeliers, but it wasn’t. The rich and powerful didn’t want to give up so dazzling and magnificent a light source. They simply wired their crystal chandeliers for electricity.

Now some people are going back to the idea of crystal chandeliers with wax candles. You can too. Just ask a Schonbek dealer to show you your many choices. Call 800-836-1892 if you need help locating a showroom near you.

I personally have no quarrel with electricity. If romantic light is what you want, you can always dim your crystal chandelier. So you can have it all.