One of the most fun and challenging projects for us - custom chandeliers for the Gasparilla Inn - was given to us by our friends at Kemble Interiors. We have had a long, absolutely delightful relationship with Kemble. I can remember when we set up our first High Point showroom and our first born, Pete (who is now 27), was tucked in the open drawer of an armoire. Mimi Kemble and team, with her daughter Celerie in tow (I think Celerie, fresh out of Harvard, was only “advisory” at that time), made a sizeable order of our sandblasted glass collection as well as some of the first pieces of our Tzumindi’s water hyacinth woven collection that we had been bringing to the US market. Mimi became a serial Tzumindi Pig Stool buyer from then on, and, when I asked her years later how she sold so many she said, “I would make a little line of pigs leading from the sidewalk into the store, and people just followed them.” She also joked, ”I can always judge how good a party is by how many people are dancing on top of a pig!” I’m bad with dates, but I think this was before the world was "about to end" in 2000. Fast forward to Celerie’s meteoric rise up the design chain, Mimi holding down the fort in Palm Beach, and lots of orders in between, Cece Bowman asked if we would like to do a large scale replica of another large job we had done for them a few years earlier using the Chucho Chandelier. Only much bigger this time, plus 1 giant chandelier made of fish and glass. This is what we did the first time with our office is being used as a test room for a 4x2 and 1x3 piece rendition of our Chucho chandelier.
So Jane made the designs!
Kemble wanted the Chuchos LARGER so larger we made them. They also wanted to add a chandelier made of fish and bubbles, but that one needed to be a whopping 22 feet tall.
And here is the Fish & Bubble chandelier being strung in the warehouse yard for practice.
Our deft shop, led by Mariano Perez, had so many aspects to figure. How to make the frame. How to make the fish. How to wire and make it come alive electrically. How to hang the pieces to the frame. How to figure out how many pieces hanging at which height were needed. How to install once on site. How to pack. How to ship. It’s one thing when the item is 20” x 20”, a simple box works great! This was 22 feet tall, 8 feet wide and had over three hundred pieces to it, it is a different matter altogether. Needless to say, Mariano is no less than a miracle worker.
The Gasparilla Inn is a storied century plus hotel/resort on Boca Grande, just south of Sarasota. It exudes old world charm, but keeps everything light and breezy. The place is downright comfortable and cozy, and this latest renovation by Mimi Kemble and team somehow updates the place while keeping it traditional, with a hard nod to casual fun. Few folks could have pulled off such a feat, and Mimi and team were the perfect and natural choice.
We typically do not go to an install, but decided to go down for a day to see how seamlessly the install would of course go. But, naturally, things did not go to plan. The contracting manager on site we dubbed “Pig Won’t” (from the children’s book Pig Will and Pig Won’t) Pig Won’t didn’t really have an idea how the giant chandelier should be hung, and he was right, it was a logistical puzzle. So rather than figure out the puzzle, he left the pieces on the floor. Two days went by and of course we couldn’t leave. Jane collected shells on the beach and at night made elaborate designs with them on our hotel room table. Stress relief.
On the fourth day, while standing around waiting for Pig Won’t, two HVAC Company Vans pulled up and 6 men got out, sussed out the situation, and within an hour had that huge frame hanging in place. These guys were team PIG WILL!!! We all cheered on the success as it was true grit on their part. Once they left, Jane and I commenced to dress the giant frame with a hundred strands of fish and glass. We went up and down ladders late into the night. In the morning, we had the opportunity to witness, for the first time, the sunlight glinting off the ocean through the blue and green glass in that wide open room. It was magical.
I really hadn’t thought about this project in a while… but recently we have been getting a lot of orders for the Chucho with some folks requesting larger sizes. Made us want to walk down memory lane at the Gasparilla Inn!
