Alabaster Chandeliers Lighting, What You Need to Know

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Alabaster Chandeliers

Alabaster chandeliers are often used in transitional design settings to a degree of warmth and natural beauty to decorative surroundings. Alabaster chandeliers use natural mined alabaster as a shade material.

Most alabaster is mined near the banks of the Ebro River south of Zaragoza Spain. While there are several forms of alabaster including ones with color variations, it is the translucent type that is utilized in lighting products.

Like many materials that we assume are recent discoveries, alabaster has been around for a very long time. In fact ancient Egyptian alabaster carvings are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. We also know that the ancient Chinese and Greeks also carved alabaster, modern Greeks use it for floor tiles.

To fully appreciate the work involved in producing alabaster for lighting purposes, one needs to understand its origins. Alabaster is scooped out of the ground using huge steam shovels. The factory of where the alabaster is worked receives piles of the rock in all sorts of shapes and sizes. From here, pneumatic hammers are used to chip of unwanted outer layers consisting of soil and other minerals. Once at the heart of the alabaster, larger clean rocks are cut into slices of different sizes determined by the height of the pieces to be produced. Solid cylinders are then extruded from these slices where a metal disc is joined to the rock and together they are brought to a lathe and cut to desired shapes. Here a high percentage of stones are shattered since many of the stone’s veins do not withstand the machine’s vibration. The alabaster stone is now ready to be sanded and applied to a coat of polyurethane that will protect it from further dehydration.

With its inherit depth and veining, alabaster can enlighten a room with a distinct richness and color. Beautiful alabaster stones are utilized in lighting fixtures of varying designs including, Old World European cast chandeliers, art deco chandeliers, and modern lighting fixtures of all sorts.

To clean alabaster, just apply a damp cloth to the inner and outer surfaces of the stone and wipe away any residual.