I know -- it's very tempting. Go on discount furniture sites such as Wayfair, Sofary, Rakuten or even Target and you may see stuff you like. Well-designed, cute lighting that might look good in your space. Even people of considerable means will think twice about paying for a designer-made fixture when a similar looking one is available at a much lower cost. And certainly there is not much difference between original and knock-off in terms of the function of the object: Both of them will light your space just fine.
But before hitting the buy now button for the cheaper option, I'd like persuade you that buying the more expensive chandelier, pendant, sconce, or lamp is absolutely worth the cost. Here's why:
That Cheap Chandelier is Cheap Only Because It is Made in China by the Thousands
There is an area of southern China -- the Guangdong province right near the border with Hong Kong -- that makes most of the lighting in the world. The economies of scale involved in this mass production allows for great savings. The only way you can buy a light fixture for under $100 is for it to be one of countless thousands made in Chinese factories and shipped to the west by shipping container.
You Want Something Different
In the world of fine art, collectors look for the unusual, unique thing. If everyone has something, that something loses value. When you pay more money for lighting, you get more assurance that what you are getting comes from artisan studios who are not kicking out the same design by the millions. And because it is not ubiquitous, your chandelier will retain its ability to delight and surprise.
Materials are important
There is all the difference in the world between cheap crystal and good crystal. Most inexpensive chandeliers don't even have crystal. They are made with K9 Optical glass. It looks OK, but is WAY less interesting than proper crystal (we have a separate blog post on chandelier quality, which I suggest you check out). A good chandelier is heavy -- made of metal, not plastic or mylar -- and crystal, not glass or -- heaven forfend! -- plastic.
Lighting is Art
If you look at lighting as a functional object -- a thing that does a job like a car tire or a wrench, then there is no reason to pay a lot for a light fixture. But if you've read this blog post up until this point, you probably don't think that way -- nor should you. You think of lighting as a form of artistic expression as well as a functional object.
Good lighting is complex. It is about something. The eye lingers on your decorative lighting in a way it doesn't for other objects in your home. If you are going to spend money on a signature item, consider spending it on the lighting, and save elsewhere.
Art is also about scarcity. A mass produced lithograph loses some of its exquisiteness compared to a numbered lithograph. Art is about the hand of the artist, and mass production is antithetical to
Lighting is the Jewelry of Your Home
Lighting is the first thing people notice in your home -- before the furniture or paintings or rugs or finishes. Humans are naturally drawn to light.
And We are especially attracted to sparkle. There is an evolutionary explanation for this: Our eyes evolved to seek out a sparkle on the distant horizon because a sparkle indicated flowing water. And flowing water is more likely than standing water to be potable. We associate sparkle with life. It's why crystal chandeliers retain a unique innate appeal.
It's a Small Price To Pay
Think how much your home costs. Think of the time and effort involved in creating your interior space. Because lighting is the
What's a couple hundred or even a couple of thousand bucks compared to that investment. You can afford good lighting. And you deserve it.
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Nicely said, Luna.
We're excited to showcase our latest collaboration with The Keen (1708 Lombard St.) out in Philadelphia. Their delightful menu captures good ole American flavors and flair, and well...we like how they've lit up the place. I'd personally recommend the
pig candy (thick-cut brined and candied bacon with spicy maple syrup) as a starter along with a "fast craft" drink as they call it (who doesn't like a fast drink?). So the next time you're out in Philly, give the Keen a visit and enjoy both your appetite and the ambiance. Cheers!
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https://www.petagadget.com/gadget/crystal-gear-pendant-michael-mchale-designs/
]]>We're very excited to showcase this new pathway between technology and lighting. Stay tuned.
~Mario
The Bushwick Lantern continues the MMD tradition of creating new lighting forms out of familiar shapes. Here, four simple frames (Either all black steel, or with black steel horizontal and brass vertical frames) are discreetly connected together to hold in place a double-curtain wall of crystal prisms, all of which create a spectacular and memorable modern pendant.
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- A custom Tribeca Banqueting Chandelier against a painted tin ceiling from the Precinct 10 website.
Precinct 10 is a modern take on an early 1900s Prohibition-era speakeasy in a sweepingly large yet somehow intimate space.
Our lighting added a vintage feel, dim ambiance, mixed with plush velvet seating and upbeat music made for an evening of chill entertainment. Treat yourself to a fab night at www.precinct10restaurant.com.
~Mario
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A new year is here! I always try to find new goals and ways to change up my year. There’s always the aspirational goals we put out for ourselves, but what about goals for our home? It can be about adding plants or painting walls or even adding a light fixture for small touches, but what about bigger ones? Big changes make sense at the start of the year.
Changing your kitchen is no doubt an undertaking, but I find what Sarah Robertson does at Studio Dearborn to be refreshing in changing out the ‘old’ and bringing in the ‘new’. Her experience on the value of organization in the kitchen is absolutely treasured. She sees the art of the kitchen as I do with lighting in terms of expression, illumination, and layout and the synergy between them. She sees cabinetry, as I do lighting, as it being the ‘heart of the home’, and by giving an honest appraisal of what actually works for the space. She takes into effect both internal and external variables when envisioning, developing, and executing her designs, as I do with my own designs. Now that we’re in a new year, it’s a great time for some change, and Studio Dearborn is a great start to 2017.
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After nine years with the same logo, I've decided to refresh our brand with a new logo. If you've navigated to this page, you've already seen it in the upper lefthand corner. Here it is:
Several years ago architect Ola Morin-Muhammed opened IJorere (pronounced E-JAW-RAY-RAY) an upscale event space for weddings and celebrations in Elgin, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and he made her Tribeca Collection Banqueting Chandelier the focus of the space. "Our chandelier is THE conversation piece of the venue" says Ola.
Recently she has started to attach fresh cut flowers to the fixture, and the results are pretty spectacular:
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After an absence of a few years, Michael McHale Designs is returning to the Javits Center in Manhattan for the 2016 ICFF, where we will be showing a mix of old and new things in a spacious booth which we will have all to ourselves (translation: We're not sharing it with anyone selling furniture, so they'll barely be a place to sit).
Since you have found us on the Internet machine are reading this, we would love, dear website visitor, to express our appreciation by giving to you free tickets to attend the show (a $120 value for two).
And, if you are not from the New York area but would like to come anyway, I would happily cover your airfare and put you up on my sofa for all four days.
While that last bit was a lie, the rest is true! So please send us a quick email by clicking here, write "ICFF Free Tix" in the subject line, and we will send you instructions on how to download your free tickets.
We're not really familiar with this blog, but we seem to have caught their fancy last week -- specifically the beautiful Tribeca Collection X Chandelier. Read their praise for this fixture here.
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For those of you who received you Jan/Feb edition of Bella Magazine, you may have noticed that there was something not quite right. Firstly, you may have come across their Sophisticated Spaces spread:
Cool, you may have thought -- the Tribeca Beacon Chandelier is getting some press. But then when you looked at the copy accompanying the picture...
...you realized that it is about our Matrix Collection, which a completely different thing from the pictured fixture! I know, right? But this was not the only weird thing....
In their cover story on former NSync singer Lance Bass, Lance is pictured in New York City riding a Dahon Folding Bike. Surely this former pop idol and current, er, pop idol (I guess) would be riding the far more fashionable and iconic Brompton Folder
Am I right, people?
]]>We were very happy to see that The Ribbon - the latest eatery from The Blue Ribbon Group -- made Zagat's list of its 20 hottest restaurants for 2015.
Michael McHale Designs provided The Ribbon with over 20 spectacular fixtures, including a number of custom Tribeca Banqueting Chandeliers turning the bar into something magical.
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Skaggs Creative have been one of our creative friends and advisors from the start of MMD back in 2007. Founded by husband-and-wife team Bradley and Jonina Skaggs, the Skaggs Agency has been the creative force behind brands as diverse as Henri Bendel, and HBO to New York's famous Papaya King and the Belgian waffle cart empire Waffels & Dinges.
Skaggs recently hired the talented writer Kate Seward of TheStyley to interview creative people about their process for a section of their site called Wednesday Wisdom.
Kate came around to the studio a few weeks ago for a sit down, and you can have a look at the interview here.
Michael McHale Designs is featured in the latest Friday Mansion Section of The Wall Street Journal in an article recognizing our innovative use of 3D printing technology in the area of home decor.
On a lighter note, Michael has just made a list of top 100 celebrities (!) this week in OK! Magazine. How could this be, you ask? We have no idea.
My wife and I are currently visiting Istanbul -- a fascinating city from a design point-of-view. Settled by the Greeks as Byzantium in the Seventh Century BC, it later became the seat of the Holy Roman Empire when Constantine converted to Christianity and moved the Roman Empire eastwards. Constantinople became Istanbul when it was invaded by the Ottomans in 1453 and was transformed into the Islamic seat of the Ottoman Caliphate. The mix of culture and styles are impossibly rich.
Istanbul is now the largest urban conurbation in either Europe or the middle east, and the fifth largest city in the world with over 14 million people. It is also an increasingly important center of modern art and design.
History is reflected in the city's memorable lighting. It forms the centerpieces of the two of the most important cultural buildings in the city -- the Hagia Sophia and The Blue Mosque. Subsequent lighting styles -- from the street lamps to even the most modern styles used in hospitality application in the poshest districts -- subtly reflect this lineage.
Incidentally, both these buildings are perfect illustrations of what we tell our clients all the time: Don't hang your fixtures too high! Both structures are notable in having gorgeous Ottoman-era fixtures just a few feet above the heads of the tourists below, despite the fact that the vaulted ceilings and domes above are up to five stories above that. The ottomans knew that lighting needed to be where the people needed it -- close to them -- and were functional objects as well as art.
We view our own lighting the same way.
The Tribeca Banqueting Chandelier was recently shown - perfectly situated in a gorgeous Tribeca loft -- in an article in The Observer. Will Meyerhofer, the owner of the renovated loft, features prominently in the article's discussion of whether it is better to spend your money on a building's amenities, or dropping the amenities and spending money on your interior space.
After discovering the article, we got in touch with Will, a former corporate attorney who is now a practicing therapist and writer -- to find out a little bit more about he and his partner William Kwok's design approach, and to find out a little more about him.
To highlight the dining room as the natural focal point of the space, Will stated: "We knew from the beginning we needed something special to hang above that big dining room table. The tradeoff in this apartment was amenities for space - the loft is a huge open space - and within all that volume the dining area is the natural focus of everything. We spent months searching for exactly the right piece to hang there, and we love how it turned out, like a perfect piece of jewelry that pulls everything together."
Will Meyerhofer is a former corporate attorney who went on to become a psychotherapist with a private practice located in his Tribeca loft. Will has written several books, including "Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy" - a general introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy, and "Way Worse Than Being a Dentist" - a book about the mental health challenges of being a lawyer at a big law firm. You can find out more about Will and his work on his page: A Quiet Room.
article reference : When the Extras Are Extraneous by Adam Bonislawski | 04/24/15 10:09pm (http://observer.com/2015/04/when-the-extras-are-extraneous/)
We often get pictures from satisfied customers showing off their exciting new chandelier. Unfortunately, most of these pictures are taken with iPhones and come across as pictures of fuzzy light.
This one, though, we thought was pretty good:
This Tribeca Collection Banqueting Chandelier is lighting up a standard kitchen island.
You can see that the crystal is picking up quite a bit of color from the aqua blue under-cabinet walls, as well as throwing up refracted light all around the space.
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One of the most popular places in New York City right now is Novecento in New York City's Broadway -- mainly because the Argentinean bistro has been one of downtown's epicenters of World Cup fever with the Argentinian national team playing Germany this Sunday for the World Cup Final.
Or maybe it is the Tribeca Collection Banqueting Chandelier that has been hanging above their upstairs bar for the last several years.
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When coming up with ideas for kitchen lighting, you should consider using crystal.Why? Because if your kitchen gets a lot of sunlight, it would be a wonderful addition to your kitchen to have prismatic dots of light greeting you with your morning coffee.
At Michael McHale Designs we have a number of pieces which would be suitable to any kitchen, large or small. The two basic types of lighting would be a pendant for over a round or square table. And for that, we suggest the Tribeca Collection Grand Chandelier:
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