Friday, July 7, 2006

A clever observer in my office discovered an interesting fact. In casinos in Las Vegas there are no clocks.

But as we know, there are lots of crystal chandeliers.

Obviously clocks are very disruptive. They encourage people to stop what they’re doing and rush off to do something else. No good for business in a casino.

Whereas crystal chandeliers radiate enjoyment, encouraging people to stay where they are.

So if you love entertaining, and in general want your guests to relax and linger over the conversation, crystal chandeliers can be a great help. On the other hand, on those few occasions when you’re giving an obligatory dinner, you might want to hang a temporary clock in the main party room, somewhat lessening the power of the crystal chandelier to prolong the party. Your guests will be loathe to leave, but the clock may succeed in reminding them of the march of time.

Because crystal chandeliers have such a strong influence on human behavior, casinos generally go all out in choosing lavish styles. The bigger the better, with as much crystal as the chandelier will bear.

Paris Las Vegas is a good example, with its magnificent display of Schonbek crystal chandeliers.

Thursday, July 6, 2006

One day Galileo noticed a chandelier swinging in the Pisa cathedral. Each swing, he observed, took the same amount of time, despite the fact that the swings kept getting shorter. This lead him to various experiments and his discovery of the law of the pendulum.

Crystal chandeliers are great teachers of the laws of Nature, so if you need an excuse to get one, consider using this one.

A more obvious science lesson to be gotten from contemplating a crystal chandelier is on the behavior of prisms and the phenomenon of the rainbow.

Light travels through the air and encounters a prism (that is, an ornament on your crystal chandelier). Up to this point, the light is white, but now the prism causes the light to bend to various degrees. Because the prism has two faces, the light bends differently to produce different colors. All the colors of a rainbow are inherent in the white light that first encounters the prism. The prism releases them.

So a crystal chandelier with its many prisms must be a joyful thing for light to encounter, permitting it to manifest as spectral brilliance.

Schonbek not only plays with prismatic light, when designing crystal chandeliers, but also with silky smooth, unfaceted crystal spheres and teardrops that reflect the light rather than refracting it. La Scala, for example, has both smooth and faceted crystal. Unique optical effects take place from the combining of these various types of crystal.

I was never good at science, so I hope I haven’t misrepresented anything here. The main thing is, all you have to do is look attentively at a crystal chandelier for a minute or two to know that Nature is not just a law-maker, but a great lover of beauty.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

I have an ivy plant on a pedestal by the window next to my dining table. This weekend I noticed that one tendril is reaching out for the crystal chandelier. It should be reaching toward the light from the window, so this is very odd.

Is my fondness for crystal chandeliers influencing the plants in the house? I’m tempted to see how far this ivy will go. It’s only a couple of  feet away from the lower arms of the crystal chandelier. Shall I wait to see if it reaches its goal?

Of course I can’t have friends being strangled by an ivy plant if they try to circumnavigate the table. But the situation amuses me.

Some Schonbek crystal chandeliers have a leafy quality themselves, like Rivendell. And Florentine, which displays a plethora of leaf motifs. Perhaps crystal chandeliers love vines as much as vines love crystal chandeliers.

This is getting fanciful, but I’ve heard stories about Schonbek designers studying the structure of leaves or flowers in the process of refining a new crystal chandelier. And I remember Andrew Schonbek studying a tiny sculpture of a tree during the period when Genesis was being conceived. There really are lots of connections between Nature and crystal chandelier design.