Crystal seems to attract light. If there’s the tiniest moonbeam or the littlest trace of street light filtering through your drapes, your crystal chandelier will pick it up and play with it. Tiny edges of light will dance among the crystal pendants and the cut crystal column parts.

Similarly, a Schonbek lamp with an urn or vase shaped crystal body has a certain innate luminosity. As my co-worker Caleb commented the other day, a Schonbek crystal lamp has a distinctive silhouette even in the absence of light.

And so you go through two stages of being delighted with your Schonbek crystal chandelier, or your Schonbek lamp. Before you turn on the switch, you intuit its beauty by the mysterious glints of light it gives off. And then you enjoy the full glory of it when it’s fully illuminated.

Because we're alive, we feel a natural affinity with the liveliness of crystal. A crystal chandelier can and will affect your mood, if you let it. You’re not likely to have that kind of relationship with your sofa or refrigerator.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Another copywriter in our office just acquired two Schonbek lamps.  I interviewed Caleb to capture his impressions fresh from the experience.

Apparently last night was a busy one for his family, because he only had time to open the box containing Diadem 10378. How he could stop at one box is a mystery to me. My husband and I would have been up all night opening both boxes and rearranging furniture to accommodate our new acquisitions. But we are rather compulsive types.

Caleb started being impressed right from the act of opening the box. He said, “I appreciated how well packaged the lamp was. It was a pretty big box for the size of the lamp that came out of it. Even that shows how much thought Schonbek puts into things.”

Then the assembly: “It was incredibly easy, which is always appreciated. To be able to put something so gorgeous together so easily, from box to table, was very cool.”

I inquired about how he’d chosen his lamps. Was he trying to complement the colors or furnishings in the room? This particular Diadem lamp is wildly colorful, sapphire and aqua crystal, with an aqua and sapphire silk shade, and an opulent Heirloom Gold finish.

No, he said. It’s a stand alone work of art in his mind. I found this quite charming. Only a man (can I say this?) would choose a lamp for itself without reference to its future environment. Probing more deeply, I discovered, however, that his wife might have given quite a bit of thought to the décor. There are two magnificent handwoven carpets in the room from Dagestan in the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia. These one-of-a-kind carpets are hand-dyed with vegetable dyes, and exhibit some of the colors seen in Diadem.

This is the great fun of a Schonbek colored crystal lamp. The many designs include colors so individual, and so different from one other, you really can find a lamp to go in almost any room, no matter how unique your color scheme.

After a good night’s sleep, did Caleb still love his lamp? “This morning I went down to grab the paper,” he said, “and the room was very dim, but even in the dark, the silhouette of the lamp was striking, the presence of the lamp could be felt.”

Were there problems at all with this lamp? Just one. “It makes the rest of your room feel inadequate,” Caleb said. “The carpets and the lamp are in the same world. But suddenly the pressure’s on to bring everything else up to snuff.” He and his wife are already looking critically at their end tables.

Happily they’re young and have the rest of their lives to catch up with their Schonbek lamps.

Monday, March 26, 2007

One great danger in life is falling into tedium, like a horse wearing blinders. This argues for owning a crystal chandelier.

We become accustomed to our sofa, our carpets, our routine, and begin moving through our living space like a gerbil on a treadmill. But you never get entirely used to a crystal chandelier. It’s always a surprise, when you come home to it at night, or see it just before falling asleep or after waking up. The light will be striking the crystal in some unexpected way. If the chandelier is densely trimmed with faceted crystal, it will call to you when you first enter the room where it presides, enticing you to take cognizance of the beauty of the world.

In centuries past, crystal chandeliers were almost always present in the palaces and state offices of the ruling classes. They had them for many reasons: to establish prestige, to intimidate enemies and, perhaps most important of all, to declare themselves patrons of art and beauty. The ruling classes were under a lot of stress, then as now. Others were after their lands and power. To get some relief from the stress, these beleaguered aristocrats were usually passionate party people. All sorts of festivities and fancy dress balls were regularly held. On all such occasions, the more crystal chandeliers overhead, the better.

Schonbek has had the kindness to bring the crystal chandelier into the twenty-first century, so it can work its magic for denizens of the modern world.   Dating back to the nineteenth century, Schonbek is well equipped to keep tradition alive.

At the same time, the Schonbeks are innovators, and always have been. They introduced the idea of the tiny crystal chandelier, empowering people with small rooms (like me) to partake in the pleasure of living with crystal. They revived the ancient rock crystal chandelier, making it a viable home accessory, after centuries of being typecast as a museum piece. They created colored crystal chandeliers to encourage the birth of a new romanticism in our overworked society.

Not that Schonbek expects, or wants, to put a crystal chandelier in every home.   It takes an adventurous spirit to welcome something so remarkable as a crystal chandelier into one’s life. I might have been too timid to do it myself, if I hadn’t talked myself into it, writing Schonbek ad copy. Copywriters have to dig into the product, understand the details of its composition, absorb its ambiance. The more closely you examine Schonbek crystal chandeliers, the more susceptible you become to enchantment.