Design notes.(Authentic Designs)

When Dan Krauss decided to restore his eighteenth-century house in Great Neck, New York, he faced a problem that many collectors of antiques have grappled with over the years: how could he find period lighting for an interior that was meant to be illuminated with oil lamps and candles? Krauss, who worked as an artists' representative, solved his problem by purchasing Authentic Designs in the early 1960s and fabricating the kind of lighting fixtures he wanted. His first device was a chandelier fashioned from a copper waste pipe for his son Michael's bedroom. Today, Michael Krauss, his wife Maria, and ten craftsmen and women at Authentic Designs manufacture faithful reproductions of lighting fixtures.

Authentic Designs re-creates in perfect detail colonial and early American lighting devices based on mid-eighteenth-century to mid-nineteenth-century designs copied from photographs, line drawings, and originals found in old New England inns, museums, and private collections. The firm's products include chandeliers, wall sconces, table lamps, and exterior lanterns, many of the latter produced in styles that are suitable for interior use. All can be electrified with fully concealed wiring or left unwired for candles.

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The fixtures are made from the finest American sheet copper, brass, and terne (an alloy of lead and tin). Individual components are laid out on the metal, which is then cut, bent, folded, rolled, and soldered by hand whenever feasible, using techniques that have not changed since the eighteenth century.

The metals can remain in their natural state; be lacquered or given special antique finishes in copper, brass, darkened terne, verdigris, and rubbed bronze; or be hand-painted in colors chosen by the customer. The arms of chandeliers are available in the same wide range of metals ...