Giving a Second Life to Historic Light Fixtures

Watch as Dawn Ladd, founder of Aurora Lampworks, Inc., explains her team’s work restoring light fixtures for The Frick Collection’s Fifth Avenue home. By refurbishing the fixtures’ appearance and rewiring them to improve energy efficiency and lighting quality, visitors to the museum’s renovated buildings will enjoy their signature historic character while gaining a better viewing experience of the cherished works of art they house.
To learn more about our renovation and enhancement project, visit www.frick.org/renovation.
Producer/Director/Editor: Lisa Goble
Director of Photography: George Koelle
Audio Production: Sean Troxell
Original Music: George Koelle
Editorial: Noah Purdy
© 2023 The Frick Collection

[@patricksheary2219]

Beautiful early electric lighting fixtures nice to see them being restored. Since this isn’t mentioned, most (certainly not all) were made for the mansion by the New York City lighting firm Edward F. Caldwell, Inc. For those who don’t know, they were one of the city’s premier lighting makers and supplied fixtures to places like the White House, Rockefeller Center and the New York Public Library. Their lighting can be seen in historic structures internationally as well. The only critique that I respectfully submit is I would have liked to see more conservation of the original electrical components if they survived. Crispy wires aside (which of course needs to be replaced), period electrical components themselves (sockets for instance) were of high quality and are compatible with today’s lighting standards. This is a common mistake made when treating historic electric lighting. I also appreciated the mention that most of the new work (added spotlights) are reversible. Can’t wait to see the restored interiors. Thanks for this fun video.

[@marieanneaffre1802]

Thank you so much
Beautiful !!❤🌐❤👌

[@michaelalan4705]

Fascinating!

[@matthewsiegel6307]

With the refined taste in art that Mr. Frick seemingly had, one would have expected that the lighting would have been on par by means of period - 17th - 19th century - chandeliers and sconces, rather than the inferior-cast, albeit somewhat elegant, early 20th-century revival pieces shown!

[@mercoid]

They would have had to wire those 17th - 19th century lighting fixtures for electricity. Highly impractical and requiring bastardization of the hard to find pieces. So I must disagree. Cast, Turn of the 20th century lighting fixtures were the way to go. They are quite beautiful and particularly any ones purchased by the Frick concern, would’ve been of the highest quality.

[@matthewsiegel6307]

During the early 20th Century there would not have been such a concern as you now espouse. Moreover, period lighting has been carefully electrified as unobtrusively as possible without doing violence to the fixture, for many years!