Friday, September 8, 2006
The Da Vinci™ dishwasher safe chandelier story is all over the Internet.

Google “dishwasher safe chandeliers,” or “da vinci chandelier,” and you can read all about it in a number of languages. In some cases, there are pictures.

The more I think about it, I believe it’s the dazzling beauty of the crystal contrasting with the nitty-gritty image of it going through the dishwasher that makes this story so irresistible.

It has been mistakenly reported, however, that you have to disassemble a crystal chandelier in order to clean it, a monumental chore. I never take my crystal chandeliers apart to clean them.

I use the two glove method described on this website. One damp gloved hand strokes a crystal pendant clean while the other dry gloved hand strokes it dry. This method gives you the opportunity to examine the crystal attentively up close. The cutting and polishing of fine crystal is an art, and the shapes that artisans of the past invented to enhance prismatic effects are really intriguing. Normally you’re looking at a crystal chandelier as one glittering entity, a good thing certainly. But you are not appreciating the individual beauty of each piece of it.

It’s like not seeing the trees for the forest.

You won’t be doing much individual crystal appreciation when you clean your Da Vinci™ crystal chandelier. You’ll just be popping it into the dishwasher. Unless you take a minute to examine the crystal. I’d recommend taking that minute. Check out the individual crystals with that wonderful sharp faceting Swarovski® is so famous for. Also, notice how Da Vinci™ is composed of crystal octagons of all different sizes. By using different sizes of crystal, Schonbek makes the crystal fabric very tight and achieves an inimitable brilliance.

If you just happened upon this blog, don’t miss the Da Vinci™ story on this website.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

When Schonbek introduced The Rose, I interviewed Andrew Schonbek over the phone to write a press release to the trade.  He said to me, “You’re going to love this crystal chandelier.” And I did fall in love with The Rose, sight unseen, just from Andrew’s description.

I predict that nostalgia will be making another comeback.  (It never really goes away.) The catalyst will be The Rose, the newest Schonbek colored crystal chandelier.

If you can’t stop watching period pieces on public TV, if  you sometimes regret that we’re not all wearing flounces and lace, and if you obsessively haunt flea markets (or would if you had time), then you’ve probably been waiting all your life for The Rose.

This crystal chandelier is named after the faux porcelain roses that are entwined in the scrolls and crown. The botanical rose, with its tens of thousands of varieties and fanciful names, inspired Schonbek to go wild with  crystal color combinations. The Rose comes in 12 color palettes.

You can see most of the colors on this website. The design is so new, we’re still waiting for two more photos. So be sure to check back.

We call the crystal color options “color palettes” because each rendition of The Rose is  really a medley of crystal colors, not to mention shapes and types.

When you look at this chandelier, you’re immediately struck by the fabulous antique styles of crystal. There are elongated crystal raindrops, tiny faceted crystal jewelry beads, green crystal leaves and crystal pears. The Rose is a first for Schonbek in its lavish display of opal crystal, and I’m just learning what that is. Opal crystal is opalescent. It gleams softly instead of giving off fiery bursts, like transparent cut crystal. The impression is very vintage.

The Rose comes in a variety of sizes, from dainty pedant to dining room size. So you can hang this crystal chandelier in the parlor, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. It would be fun to hang The Rose throughout a home, changing the crystal color palette from room to room. Your whole house would begin to feel like a rose garden.

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The Chicago Tribune featured our new dishwasher safe crystal chandelier this past Sunday in their home section.

This chandelier is getting a lot of media attention, starting a week ago with the New York Times. It’s so much in tune with the stress level of our overworked population.

People can’t help being attracted by crystal chandeliers. I believe this is primal. When you think about it, crystal behaves rather like fire, creating mysterious lighting effects that are never still. Humans have been gazing entranced into campfires and fireplaces since the beginning. Now they can gaze at a crystal chandelier and be mesmerized in much the same way.

But there’s obviously doubt on the part of workaholics everywhere about the practicality of a crystal chandelier. Da Vinci™, world’s first dishwasher safe crystal chandelier, alleviates these doubts.

I’m just trying to get to the root of the intense media interest in Da Vinci™.

But maybe I’m on the wrong track. People who want crystal chandeliers can pay other people to clean them. Or they may actually grow to love cleaning them personally, as I do. So maybe the appeal of Da Vinci™ is simply its funky originality. The idea of owning a chandelier made of the finest crystal in the world that you can pop apart like an orange and put in your dishwasher is just plain fun.