I have been working with a longtime client and friend on her urban loft space off and on for a few years now. When it came to replacing an old dining room light fixture, my client said wanted something that was “like a branch or something, coming out of the ceiling, with lights somehow integrated into it.”
Working drawing for the branch chandelier with lanterns.
And so the brainstorming and resourcing began. As I pondered how to take this idea of lanterns hanging from a tree in a garden, and translate it into an indoor dining room chandelier in an urban Manhattan space, I stumbled across the creative geniuses behind the Alpha Workshops, thanks to Arden Klemmer at the Fortuny showroom (where the lanterns would inevitably come from).
After out initial discussions, he Alpha Workshops came up with this idea of making the chandelier from reclaimed grapevine roots and branches, and we were off on a design expedition that would take several months to design, and several more to create.
The grapevine root armature hangs in the studios at The Alpha Workshops.
The armature itself, pictured above, consists of several grapevine roots and branches that have been put together to look as if the whole thing is one massive root system or upturned dwarf tree. We needed to achieve an overall size of 8 feet by 2 feet to cover a 12-foot dining table. As grapevine roots are small, this required several consultations at the Alpha Workshops studios to design and refine the armature itself. In the end, we used several part of several root systems to create the appearance of one giant, upturned grapevine tree.
Once we were done with armature, we loaded in and spent several days installing it in the apartment. After that, we wired seven Fortuny lanterns into the armature, and the client hand-placed each one of them. The lanterns are made of teak wood and we used the Ashanti pattern, one of Fortuny’s early designs which is inspired by African tribal symbols.
The finished chandelier. Photo by George Lange.
One of the things I love most about my work is the ongoing opportunity to work with talented craftspeople and passionate design devotees. It was a dream come true to work with the Alpha Workshops and Fortuny on this project, and I look forward to many more collaborations with both of them!