We have a listing of showrooms that display Sophia on this website. Schonbek has made Sophia available to a very select group of lighting showrooms. Most of them also carry Milano, so you’ll have lots to look at if you visit.

Sophia means wisdom in Greek, a suggestive name. There’s a lot of wisdom and originality in the design. This chandelier looks like a period piece right out of a palace several centuries old but, in fact, it belongs to several periods, including the early twenty-first century!

Rather than a solid supporting center column, a Sophia crystal chandelier has an open cage construction. Elaborate interconnected cast scrollwork supports the chandelier, which has a serene open space at its heart. Depending on the style of your Sophia, this space will showcase an elaborate cast spike pointing upward and a hollow handcut crystal sphere hanging down. Open cage styling dates back to the seventeenth century.

On the other hand, the fact that the chandelier is fully cast shows an eighteenth-century influence. So in Sophia you have a crystal chandelier that embraces both Renaissance and Baroque fashions. You have only to look at Sophia to see how harmoniously these ideas live together.

The design of crystal ornaments has its history, too. The Swarovski® company is a twenty-first century innovator, and thanks to them we can can enjoy gorgeous crystal ornaments influenced by contemporary fashion trends.

Sophia comes in several STRASS® Swarovski® crystal colors of great subtlety, conveyed in crystal shapes that are delightfully sleek and chic. Take another look at the examples of Sophia on this website. But for the real experience, be sure to visit a Sophia dealer.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
Lacy is the word for a Milano crystal chandelier. Which may not seem startling until you recall that the entire body of the chandelier is cast.

Castings are heavy, whereas lace is light, so something rather amazing is going on here. Schonbek worked with master mold makers and casters in Italy to create unique castings for Milano with filigree openwork. I can’t help thinking of The Lacemaker by Vermeer, and the poignant attitude of the young needle woman as she concentrates so intensely on an exceedingly delicate task.

The task of making a cast chandelier appear delicate is even more daunting, really. But the delicacy of Milano is very much in the spirit of baroque design.

The baroque ideal was not heavy and heroic, but lighthearted and fun-loving. Illusionism was popular among baroque artists, too, so making cast chandelier components look like lace is very baroque indeed.

Lovers meeting in leafy glades was a favorite subject of baroque art. Milano, rich in floral and foliate motifs, is definitely related to this emotional theme.

Lovers in woodland scenes can be pensive as well as ebullient, of course. You can define the mood of your Milano by the finish and crystal type you choose.

Schonbek developed an entire new line of finishes for the new cast collections. I suspect Andrew Schonbek has a special fondness for Cypress. And Coppertina is so unusual that he had to make up a new word for it. I personally love Florentine Gold.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Which Schonbek crystal chandelier does Andrew Schonbek have in his dining room, you might ask. The Rose! This is the chandelier he assured me I would fall in love with, before I saw the first images of the new design.

I have to admit, The Rose is loveable. As far as I can tell, Andrew Schonbek never had any doubt what to name it. The tiny little rose sculptures clinging to the framework and scrollwork gave him the name. The Rose is totally romantic. You have to believe in love at first sight and happy endings to be worthy of this crystal chandelier.

The Rose has a lighthearted quality, yet it’s laden with crystal of various antique shapes. The most prominent crystal ornament is what I’ve been calling an elongated raindrop. I love this crystal. You can also see it used as an accent on a Rondelle lamp. For The Rose it assumes different colors, depending on what crystal color palette you choose.

The Rose has matching wall sconces that are quite fetching. Also see sconces with one candle, two candles and three candles.

The sconces are important, I think, because when you’ve committed to The Rose and gone this deeply into an emotional style of decorating, you might as well go all out with matching wall sconces.

As a mini chandelier, The Rose is completely adorable. On a dainty little frame, the crystal looks especially pert and pretty, and the plump pear-shaped crystal finial appears deliciously large.

If you love working with color when you design a room, the 32 varieties of The Rose on this website might send you in some interesting directions.