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'Chandelier'
Meaning candleholder derives from ‘chandelle’, the french word for candle. It is applied to a light fixture suspended from the ceiling, normally having branch supports and two or more candles or electric lights.
The earliest chandeliers were little more than a cross-shape formed from two battons of wood with a pricket (spike) at each end. The candles fixed on the prickets would originally have been made of animal fat (tallow),
rather than the wax type used today.Very few chandeliers of this period survived the destruction of the reformation in the sixteenth century, These chandeliers would lend flickering light to the cavernous interiors of medieval churches and abbeys across europe. The first chandeliers in private homes hung only in the palaces and mansions of the supremely wealthy and powerful. Other than a guttering taper or the dim glow of firelight, evening illumination was largely beyond the means of most. There are curly-armed brass forms in dutch and flemish paintings of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Chandeliers are shown hanging in the homes
of the prosperous merchant classes. More modest households, with access to the raw materials for candlemaking, might have had chandeliers made from turned wood, bent metal, wrought iron, or tin sheet.
swinging chandeliers
Galileo Galilei began experimenting with pendulums after he saw a chandelier swinging in the pisa cathedral. He noticed each swing of the chandelier took the same amount of time, even though each swing was shorter than the previous swing. this led to Galileo's discovery of the law of the pendulum.
An era of chandeliers
Mirrors, shining brass plates and light-breaking rock crystals (quartz) from the earth were used in these candle holders to spread and reflect the light. rock crystal was rare, brittle, hard to work with, and very expensive.
Pressed glass pieces came into use, but these were dull because they lacked qualities of refraction.
The glass was also brittle and could not be cut and shaped like rock crystal. A substitute was sought.
in 1676 by the english glassmaker, George Ravenscroft, creating a new sort of crystalline glass resembling
rock crystal. Lead oxide was added to the glass during its manufacture and this made the material soft
and highly refractive. This new material was easier to cut and was even more refractive than rock crystal.
Though this was a new idea at the time in europe, the use of lead oxide to enhance the brilliance of glass
was known in mesopotamia in ancient times. Pretty and curvaceous mouth-blown glass chandeliers
began to be made on the venetian island of murano around 1700. In the late 1800’s Daniel Swarovsky of Austria began a career in stone cutting and crystal manufacture. Swarovski patented a machine to cut jewelry stones
to perfection. he expanded the use of this technology to include cutting crystal chandelier pieces. He perfected the purity of leaded glass crystal to a state of flawless brilliance.
The advent of more effective light sources such as paraffin and electric incandescent lamps reduced the functionality of the crystal chandelier. It was propelled to a new standing as a decoration unto itself, even when unlit.
Design
The chandelier has a long history, its styles changed and no other lamp had shown us so many fancifull form
exagerations ... because chandeliers are more than mere lighting appliances: For the first time, the names of individual manufacturers (who were also initially their own designers) began to appear - William Parker, William Perry, and F. & C. Osler in England (all these are also well reputed in India, Persia and America),
Baccarat in France, among the bohemian crystal are Schonbek and Swarovski, Josef Lobmeyer in Austria,
the Mount Washington glass factory in America, and many more. The growing middleclass market, meanwhile,
was satisfied by more accessible versions, in both scale and cost. The chandelier remained popular into the early twentieth century, all though the new decorative styles, such as arts and crafts, art nouveau, art deco...
generally opted for other forms of lighting.after the second world war the subsequent drive for fresh forms for every element of the domestic interior brought the chandelier back to life, in the work of italians
Gino Sarfatti and Achille Castiglioni and the german Ingo Maurer. End.
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