Friday, September 15, 2006
I never studied art in college, only philosophy and literature. So after college I decided to vacation in Europe whenever I could for an art education in museums.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was first on my list. There I learned the lesson that a photo in an art book gives you only the merest hint of how great the original work of art will be. Rembrandt tends to look flat and muddy in books. In real life, his paintings are unimaginably deep, rich and moving.

I hope you’ll excuse me if I apply this same lesson to crystal chandeliers. A catalog or an image on the internet can never convey the visual feast offered in person by a beautifully designed crystal chandelier.

Like a Rembrandt, a crystal chandelier has depth, dimension and a magical relationship with light. The details, like the brushwork of a great artist, are surprising and lively.

Mere images tend to present the crystal chandelier only skin deep. The outermost crystal obscures  the crystal pendants and spikes closer to the column parts. And the column crystal may not even show.

The center of a crystal chandelier is really very interesting. I recently read the vase-shaped crystal column pieces seen in many traditional styles were inspired by Greek and Roman urns. And then you have the open cage construction of seventeenth-century French chandeliers, with no central shaft at all. So these are details you want to observe in person.

The point is that a visit to a lighting showroom is of great importance, as you flirt with the idea of acquiring crystal chandeliers. And several visits might be better than one. Lighting showrooms are like the exhibition halls of lighting art. You can always call Schonbek for the address of a lighting showroom near you: 800-836-1892.

Specialized dealers for rock crystal chandeliers, Geometrix™ and chandeliers with black crystal are also listed on this website.

Following the museum analogy another step, I’ve often thought about how wonderful individual works of art must have looked in their original settings. A room in a museum has to group lots of paintings together. There’s no sense of how each masterpiece worked in real life. Same thing with a lighting showroom. The crystal chandeliers are all grouped together in a display. Or there may be a “room setting” that looks very nice, but it’s not your room. When you bring home your Schonbek crystal chandelier, you’re in for a wonderful experience. It will interact in an amazing way with all the color and texture in your everyday life.