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Check Out More Pics! 0

If you are looking for more photos of our chandeliers and sconces, we have a few places for you to look.  

You can scroll through our page of photos that have been sent to us by our wonderful customers.  Also, make sure to look through our blog posts. 

Every now and again we run across photos of rooms that include our chandeliers - photos that are more professional in nature.  When we catch sight of them, we pin them to one of our Pinterest boards which you can see here. 

And, if you are a Houzz lover, make sure to look at our idea board, Our Customers' Beautiful Rooms.  

We love receiving those photos, so if you have one of our chandeliers or are purchasing one in the future, please send us a photo showing the chandelier in your room!  

Crystal Chandeliers for Any Decor 0

Are crystal chandeliers too fancy for the average home?

If you have never considered a crystal chandelier for a room, you may think of it as a luxury, but we consider it a natural choice.  What better way to brighten a room?  Crystals and light go together like peanut butter and jelly, wood and marble, soap and water…

Imagine sunlight reflecting and refracting from the center of your room throughout the day. Bright, clean, happy light bouncing around your room.  Whether the crystals are on an iron fixture or hanging from even more crystal, the cheery warmth from a sparkly light is invigorating and inviting.  So, while they look magnificent, a crystal chandelier doesn’t have to make a room opulent. 

We hear over and over “my house doesn’t warrant a crystal chandelier”, and we respond with “why not?” Crystal chandeliers have been the preferred choice for hundreds of years and their time is not done. 

Our customers place chandeliers in every type of home – from manufactured homes to literal palaces.  Décor choices range from rustic log cabin to Colonial-American to traditional and they all look fabulous. 

Restoration Files - Glass Panels 0

This is a typical Maria Theresa style chandelier. The challenge with this chandelier restoration is that the chandelier came to us like this:

As you can see, every bit of crystal was stripped from the fixture in an attempt to restore it.  But, the owner was overwhelmed by the project, justifiably so, and brought it to us.

Here is Richie attaching the panels to the metal frame.  This was quite a process as he had to spend considerable time matching bends.   

Once the frame was rebuilt and covered, we began work on the crystal trimmings. Cleaning, re-pinning, and determining where each piece attaches is the last part of the restoration process.  

Here is the final product ...

Restoration Files - Just a Little Attention 0

This lovely crystal chandelier needed just a little attention.  It had one broken arm, but everything else was intact, so we dismantled and cleaned it, replaced the broken arm and rewired it. 

All the crystal was cleaned and sorted.

And, the finished product was beautiful.

Different Types of Pinning for the Crystals on a Chandelier 4

All the little pieces of crystals connect to each other using wire, but there are different methods of making these connections.  We call this chandelier pinning and there are 3 prominent styles: Swedish, Traditional (aka Wrinkle) and Clips.

A crystal that has Swedish pinning will have one long piece of wire strung into the holes of the two pieces of crystals that are to be connected. This one piece of wire is then wound around itself.

Usually a fixture that has this type of Swedish pinning will utilize the same pinning method to connect the crystals to the body of the chandelier - making cleaning a fixture like this more time consuming. 

Traditional or Wrinkle pinning is similar to Swedish, but uses 2 pins - one pin per crystal hole. These pins look like straight pins when purchased.

As you can see above, the pins are looped into a circle with curling pliers and turned perpendicular to each other.  Then, they are wound together - similar to 2 split rings. Usually, they are then simply hooked, with the same type of pin bent into a hook, to a chandelier.  

The more modern way to pin crystal is to use Clips.  Like a staple, one end of a clip goes into the hole of one piece of crystal and the other end of the clip goes into the next crystal.  

The above photo shows plain clips, but some clips look like bowties and are called Bowtie clips. 

Visit our YouTube channel for tutorials on pinning. 

Tools of the Trade - How to Open and Close Chain 0

Need to open and/or close the chain holding your chandelier?  This guy is the trick:

Chain Spreaders! They are like the opposite of a pair of pliers.  The groves on the top fit into different sizes of chain links, and when you squeeze the handles, the links are forced open. 

You provide the brute strength.