Los Angeles – You notice the opulent chandelier first, hanging on the porch of a weathered 1910 Craftsman house. Meredith Clark pulls leaded Austrian crystals from plastic containers and attaches strands of the delicate beads to a 5-foot-tall chandelier steel frame suspended from the roof.
It’s not the setting where one might expect to find a designer of fine, custom chandeliers. The path to a workshop behind the house is littered with mailing boxes, giant bags of packing peanuts and stray wooden crates. Pear-shaped crystals lie on a mat next to a scooter.
Just another day at the office, and that’s just the way Clark likes it.
Little about Clark’s rise as a lighting designer has been conventional. She became interested in chandelier design a decade ago when her boyfriend, a production manager, was struggling to find vintage chandeliers. A lightbulb came on.
“I was home with a 6-month-old child and I thought, ‘I can make that,”‘ she says.
Ten years after founding her business,
Chandi Design, Clark has seen her chandeliers grace the catalogs of Anthropologie and Neiman Marcus as well as high-profile local stores such as H.D. Buttercup.
Her largest piece, 6 feet tall, was created for the Georgia mansion of actors Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, and was delivered in a crate as big as a shed.
Formerly a sculptor, Clark was drawn to the look and feel of the vintage glass beads and crystals she found at local flea markets.
Using centuries-old French and Italian chandeliers as inspiration, she started piecing together her own fixtures.
“It was an easy transition for me,” she says. “Once I started making them, I realized how much room there was for me to be creative.” Her repertoire covers a range of styles, from feminine and romantic to more masculine, modern geometric patterns.
Steve Melendrez, owner of the Los Angeles store Living Room, says Clark’s chandeliers are true art pieces, designs now being knocked off by imitators.
“She’s a trendsetter,” he says. “My customers like them, but it’s hard for them to get their head around the price.” The chandeliers start at $800 and cost as much as $25,000 for the most elaborate custom pieces. Fully leaded crystal, Austrian crystal or English-cut Czech crystal can raise the price substantially, but once a frame is laden with these beauties, it’s hard not to reach out and touch each one, sparkling like a jewel.
Certainly, more than nearly anything else in a house, the chandelier stands as a symbol of wealth and elegance. Some interior designers see a resurgence in their popularity as a response to the prevalence of recessed lighting in contemporary homes.
“The element of sparkle is what is lacking from recessed cans,” says Los Angeles interior designer Lara Fishman, who uses chandeliers frequently. “It’s that sparkle that elevates the environment and gives the room more of a layered effect.” “I like to put something delicate and traditional in a modern house,” Clark says. “It adds good balance and an element of surprise.” Inside Clark’s home, sketches of frames and teardrop crystals intermingle with her sons’ homework on the kitchen table.
“It’s not until I get my hands on it that it takes shape and develops,” says Clark, who works with welder Sal Sainz to create steel frames but does all the wiring on-site.
“A designer who interprets your desires is rare,” says Lizanne Judge, a Topanga Canyon decorator who has worked with Clark on custom pieces. Clark, she says, is willing to collaborate with clients. “She wants people to have their vision.” Clark is complementing her handmade custom designs by teaming with Lisa Nardone of the lighting company Rosie NYC to create an affordable manufactured line produced in India. Called Sparkle, it premiered last month at a gift show in Atlanta. The pair will donate 5 percent of all sales to a fund they established to help women start their own businesses in the U.S. and India.
Like many working mothers, Clark says juggling the demands of parenting and a full-time business isn’t easy.
“For a long time, I would stop working in the afternoon and then work at night,” says the 35-year-old mother of boys, ages 6 and 9.
She now tries to give herself regular work hours, she says, with mixed results.
But in an industry obsessed with luxury, she has pulled off the biggest luxury of all: successfully growing a business that she can manage with her children close at hand.
“I love what I’m doing,” she says, “but I want to be at home with them.”
