Deeping Repair Shop

Lighting up the world….bringing a chandelier back to life

I well remember in the very early 1960s my parents returning to our house in London clutching a box the contents of which had just been acquired in Portobello Road Antiques Market.

Out came a splendid antique chandelier that was to grace our sitting room for the next 20 years. When the house was sold the chandelier came down and went into a box again. And there it has lain undisturbed for nearly 40 years, having moved around the country with me but never quite finding a suitable home.

With lockdown boredom setting in it seemed like the ideal opportunity to open the box and let the light out, so to speak: a garage project in waiting inspired by The Repair Shop – that ever popular TV programme where treasured memories are brought back to life.

The light style is called a ‘bag’ because of its shape. It consists of 36 strings of 8 graduated individual lead crystals called droplets. Each droplet is cut to both sides. This creates a mass of prisms or facets which are what give the incredible sparkle to the light when hanging. These are all hung from a brass frame and brought together in a glass dish as you can see in the photographs. This creates a very heavy piece of lighting indeed. The addition of lead to the glass-making process increases the weight significantly.

After so many years of being moved around most of the crystals had become detached from each other and were mixed up in their box. The first task was to clean them one by one, lay them out and start to piece them together like a giant crystal jigsaw. Surprisingly this was achieved in just a couple of hours and without too much swearing. As I’d expected, many of the links were broken and needing repair. In my tool box I knew I had a couple of hundred pliable brass pins that had been given to me 25 years ago when an earlier restoration had been on the cards. Out they came and were put to their original purpose. With only one or two exceptions 36 strings were re-made and only one or two needed extra first aid from pliers and fine wire.

Once every crystal string was completed they were laid out in readiness for re-attaching to the brass frame. We are fortunate to have a garage with sturdy beams I could hang the frame from and then work at eye-level. Of course, all I could see in my mind’s eye was the famous scene from Only Fools and Horses when Del Boy, Rodney and Granddad cleaned a very grand chandelier in a stately home with horrific consequences!

Within a couple of hours everything was back in place and a fine glittering chandelier graced our garage. By turning out the main lights and shining a torch through the suspended piece we were able to get an idea of how it would look when fully completed and rewired.

What I had initially thought would be a task beyond me turned out to be less than a day of concentrated effort with a lovely result. It now awaits the final touches by a qualified electrician. I can’t wait to see it illuminated again as it deserves.

Sadly, our low ceilings won’t permit its hanging so it will need to find a new home where it can sparkle and bring delight to others as it did to us. There is a very ready market for genuine and old lead crystal chandeliers and I expect this will soon form the centre piece in a new location. Yvo Heaton