A gift for glimmer and glow

YOU notice the chandelier first, hanging on the porch of a weathered 1910 Craftsman, in sharp contrast to the chop saw lying nearby. Meredith Clark pulls leaded Austrian crystals from Tupperware containers and attaches strands of the delicate beads to a 5-foot-tall steel frame suspended from her roof.

It’s not the setting where one might expect to find a designer of fine, custom chandeliers: A friend’s son is napping nearby on the sleeping porch; Clark’s own son asks if he can check his e-mail. The path to a workshop behind the house is littered with FedEx boxes, giant bags of packing peanuts and stray wooden crates. Pear-shaped crystals lie on a mat next to a Razor 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 for Shabby Chic, was struggling to find vintage chandeliers. A lightbulb went off.

“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, Clark has seen her chandeliers land in 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 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 today covers a range of styles, from feminine and romantic loop the loops to more masculine, modern geometric patterns.

Steve Melendrez, owner of the Silver Lake store Living Room, says Clark’s chandeliers are true art pieces, designs that have received the dubious compliment of 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 the 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 L.A. 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.”

Chandeliers can add a lot of fun too. Philippe Starck’s black crystal Baccarat chandeliers are at once ornate and irreverent. Placed in a minimal environment, a sparkling chandelier is a way to reclaim whimsy.

“I like to put something delicate and traditional in a modern house,” Clark says. “It adds good balance and an element of surprise.”

Made-to-order lighting also can help set a room apart. “No one else will have those fixtures,” Fishman says. “No one.”

Inside Clark’s Silver Lake home, rudimentary 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 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 say they will donate 5% 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.”

Lisa Boone can be reached at lisa.boone@latimes.com.

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On the bright side

Choosing a chandelier can be hard. Keeping it clean can be even harder. Here are some experts’ suggestions on how to tackle both challenges:

Selection

Size and purpose: Consider the length of the fixture, interior designer Lara Fishman says. How far down will it hang? Is it surface-mounted? Do you want it to be decorative or functional? In a baby’s room, a chandelier may be used for sparkle, but in a larger room, it may need to be brighter.

Scale: Don’t be put off by large chandeliers, Fishman says. The boundaries of scale can be pushed a bit.

Cleaning

No ammonia: “If it’s a crystal chandelier, there is no easy way to clean it,” says Peter Manukyan, owner of Filament Lighting in L.A., which specializes in the restoration of old fixtures. Spray cleaners that contain ammonia can hurt the metal parts of fixtures, he says. They can also affect wiring and sockets.

Vinegar, soap: Clean removable parts with dish detergent or, better yet, vinegar and water. Wipe down immovable parts with a good cloth.

Maintenance: Smoking and cooking can leave a film and attract dust. “Keep the dust off as much as possible,” Manukyan says. “Then you won’t have a bigger mess.” Dust regularly or used canned air -- the same kind used for computer keyboards.

Resources

Flea markets: They’re a great resource not only for old chandeliers, but also for parts. Meredith Clark likes the markets in Long Beach and Santa Monica and at Pasadena City College and the Rose Bowl.

Salvage yards: Clark recommends Freeway Building Materials in Boyle Heights and Silverlake Yards in Silver Lake. She also says Liz’s Antique Hardware on La Brea Avenue is great for crystals and other parts.

Online: Fishman has ordered Swarovski crystals from www.chandelierparts.com and www.cristalier.com.

-- Lisa Boone