Would you like to see how beautiful design and art come together in an Ohio home?

In the spring of 2021 I created this 36 inch glass diameter chandelier for art collectors in Ohio. The timeframe is right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. People are staying home and remodeling and in some cases, working with interior designers to bring their spaces to a higher level of beauty.

***There is a bigger backstory to this chandelier, and I’ll share that at the very bottom***

But first I’d love to celebrate how beautiful this piece turned out and how nice it looks in the client’s home.

The clients for this project are very artful and thoughtful people. They had a color scheme that had silvery blues and purples,  golden colors and accents of rust. The carpet is also a silvery blue, similar to the dining room chairs.

So the chandelier that I painted custom incorporates these colors plus some of the client’s favorite flowers including calla lilies.

The walls and artwork in the adjoining room had a golden sunny color palate that beautifully complimented the cool hues in the dinging room. So some of the accent colors that I painted in the flowers in the glass, like the oranges and golds, went well with the color palate in the next room. If you look at the top photo, you’ll see rooms with a golden glow on either side of the dining room. Those are the colors of the golden and mango colored flowers in the glass.

And this chandelier was rare because I didn’t photograph it in an iron fixture before it shipped, so I was double grateful for these professional images. Some of you have seen these pictures on my Facebook business page…and yet I know many of you do not partake in social media, so I’m sharing them here along with the bigger story.

Ok…so here’s the story that I didn’t want to mention at the beginning as I wanted to focus on the beautiful of this chandelier and the beauty of the client’s room.

Fact: this isn’t the original chandelier that the client’s choose. The first piece broke. Shipping large glass became precarious starting in late 2020 as frankly, the quality of shipping went down. There are actually many factors that go into shipping large glass…and this glass is large!! UPS Store had been packing all of my chandeliers professionally for 15 years. I’d show up at the back of the store just like the drivers do. I’d unload my chandeliers, leave…and they’d be packed in a timeframe of a couple days to over a week. More specifically one brave store manager consistently stepped up to the plate to pack my chandeliers…and in all fairness, she did the absolute best job she could possibly do with the resources that they had.

In this busy timeframe, none of my 24 inch glass diameter chandeliers broke because my glass was packed super well.. They all made it. But we were suddenly having poor results shipping 36 inch glass diameter bowls long distance (from California to Ohio and Canada). This particular size has always been dicey to ship, just do to the nature of it being glass and the fact that we were technically shipping in the largest size box that UPS ground could ship…and there wasn’t any extra room.

You might ask, why not just freight every time? Freight adds a few hundred dollars to shipping large glass, believer it or not! And it’s not a guarantee. Freight has it’s own set of issues to consider so I use it when I think we need to. Shipping large chandeliers is not a one size fits all. Distance is a factor.

In many ways, I’ve always been surprised that so many large chandeliers made it perfectly to their destinations in the 15 plus years that I’ve been fabricating and painting chandeliers.

My glass bowls are formed in my kilns here in my studio. They are strong for their size…and my 36 inch size is deep. It takes a special accident for them to break. But imagine this: the largest size box UPS can ship ground could transfer 12-24 times in a long distance trip. That includes trips on conveyor belts moving at breathtaking speeds. Or…freight…in which palates are moved around by forklifts. In freight my chandeliers can travel with large and heavy items that can fall. Neither system is glitch free.

My shipping problems in 2021 also include giant boxes being lost, never to be found. So there was a lot going on in shipping (and honestly, there still is).

What we ended up doing was taking the leap and moving to a custom molded foam system (it was very expensive for a business my size). I waited months for the system, after we did the test to figure out how best to pack the glass, because the foam components were back-ordered. But when we finally had the system installed there was a sense of relief because now I would know how the glass would sit within a box. If we do ship large glass via UPS, we know that it’s stationary inside the box. It’s packed as well as it can possibly be. And if a circumstance requires  freight, then I know that the foam will help buffer the glass from forklifts.

Does this mean glass will never break again? No…but I’ll always make it right, one way or another.

The Sliver-Blue Lining

The original piece that the clients choose had mossy greens and rust colors with a golden hue on the bottom. It was a wildflower grassy scene, very beautiful the colors would have worked. But because that piece broke, we had the opportunity to start fresh and incorporate colors from the chairs and carpet.

The other thing I’d like you to all know is that in the worst shipping climate I’ve ever seen, I still fulfilled the client’s wish for this chandelier…as I did several large chandeliers going to another interior designer’s project in Canada.

36 and 33 inch glass chandeliers are my premium chandeliers. A ton of thought and artistry goes into each and every one of them. My purpose is to be sure that I’m really capturing what my clients want within the glass so that they can hang a piece that expresses their unique style. I want my chandeliers to light up a room with color and joy!

I spare no expense in packing and shipping these large works of art. All of my glass is now packed with foam and so far, the system has worked great. Packing was never a job that I wanted…but now that we do it, it’s for the better. And I’m grateful for the many years that my chandeliers were packed with care and thought, truly they were. My gal at UPS Store would be besides herself if one broke. We could go 3 years without breaks…but eventually something does happen in shipping. I always tell my clients before we ship that not to worry about it because I can and will always paint another beautiful piece just for them. My creative well is endless.

And though I didn’t take photos of the glass in a fixture, I do have some from my light easel to share with you.

Would you like to speak with me about creating a special custom painted glass chandelier for your beautiful home?

If so, you can contact me here: https://floravitalights.com/contact.

*room photos copyright by Caitlyn Antje, photographer.