Think of all the time you spend waiting to get through the complicated phone system of almost any company you call. And the time you waste being put on call waiting. Also the time it takes to print out pages of your paperwork, or download images of your kids or grandkids.

Those empty moments could be spent enjoying the beauty of your Schonbek crystal chandelier.

If you accept this logic, then you should choose a chandelier of the utmost complexity, one that offers plenty to occupy your eyes.

May I suggest one of the new cast chandeliers just introduced by Schonbek? You’d have to time-travel back to the eighteenth century to find this intricate a chandelier design, and Schonbek may even have outdone most rococo artisans in decorative elaboration.

These are very new designs, but Milano should be in any lighting showroom that specializes in fine brands. You can call Schonbek at 800-836-1892 for a showroom near you.

Sophia is at select lighting showrooms, which means you won’t find it everywhere. But luckily we have a listing of dealers on this website.

The fascinating thing about these chandeliers is that they’re fully cast, every millimeter of available surface covered with an intricate embroidery of flowers, leaves and teensy decorative patterns. If you wear glasses, be sure to update the prescription of your lenses, so you won’t miss any of the delectable details.

If your home office is minimalist, of course, you might not want a rococo-style chandelier. In that case consider a Quantum or Plaza chandelier as your object of contemplation to fill unproductive moments. These edgy new Schonbek chandeliers exhibit clean contemporary lines, yet the crystal fabric has a fiery complexity that richly rewards your attention.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
We just changed some of the chandeliers on the Decorating Game that’s called Contemporary Bathroom. Essentially we added Da Vinci™ and Plaza.

This bathroom has a glossy tile floor that reflects everything in the room. A plethora of recessed lights twinkle like stars on the ceiling. So there’s a sparkly shiny feeling all around. A Schonbek crystal chandelier is right at home in an environment that’s highly reflective and notably sparkly.

Da Vinci™ may be my favorite choice for this decor. It becomes the nearest star in a constellation of indoor stars. Its roundness complements the rounded-off windows. And you can easily keep Da Vinci™ as perfectly clean as everything in a bathroom should be.

If you’re the kind of person who uses lots of hairspray and room spray in the bathroom, you don’t have to worry about getting sticky goo on the chandelier. Da Vinci™ is dishwasher safe. You can disassemble this chandelier in minutes and put the sections right into the dishwasher.

And of course, if you’ve designed your bathroom to encourage long, self-indulgent baths, you’ll want something beautiful to look at while you soak. Da Vinci™ is especially fun to contemplate. It may give rise to thoughts of the full moon, the eternal circle, the expanding universe. Or you may simply lose yourself in the fiery dance of prismatic light.

The new Plaza chandelier, just introduced by Schonbek, also looks great in this bathroom. There are lots of square and circular shapes in the room, and Plaza too partakes of both circularity and angularity. The graduated cylinders that make up the body of the chandelier are formed of square and rectangular crystal jewels.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Let me take you behind the scenes and reveal an example of computer wizardry. We just changed the chandeliers in a beautiful room, called the bath as theater.

The homeowner won a Schonbek room design contest award for this bathroom, and Schonbek sent a photographer to shoot it.

That was a few years ago, and meanwhile Schonbek is constantly coming up with new crystal chandelier designs. So Eileen Schonbek Beer looked at this bathroom recently and thought how great it would look, illuminated by a new Schonbek chandelier design called Plaza.

No problem. One of our graphic designers made the original chandeliers disappear with the help of Photoshop®, and put in new ones. When you think abut it, this sort of image modification is closely related to interior design. When you redecorate a space, or design it from scratch, you picture the décor with a number of fabrics and materials and color palettes, and variously furnished. We just do that on the computer, and the end result is, we hope, a good suggestion for a certain look.

Play the Decorating Game on this website encourages you to play around with different crystal chandeliers in a setting, just as we do when we occasionally switch chandeliers in a photo.

In this particular bathroom, the relationship between the crystal chandeliers and wall sconces is worth noting. There are actually two styles of Plaza, a multi-tier chandelier in the main bath area, and a one-tier chandelier inside the little private lavatory. The crystal wall sconces are called Quantum, not Plaza, but since these two designs are configured with the same square and oblong crystal jewels, the Quantum wall sconces work for both.

Marble bathrooms are big right now. Perhaps due to the stresses of contemporary life, people feel the need to bathe in luxury, like Roman patricians. And interior designers have discovered that the rich gleam of marble goes especially well with the shimmer of crystal.