melding antiquity & modernity for any space Fall Market at the Washington Design Center The Washington Design Center hosts its Fall Market Day on Thursday, October 13 from 10 am to 6 pm.  Celebrate design with exciting keynotes from Traditional Home’s Editor in Chief Ann Maine and designer John Robshaw.  Hear from business consultant Fred Berns as he… Chinese Fret End TableI worked 18 to 20 hours per day, pretty much worked around clock. I'd lie on the floor and pass out every four hours. I had to do it and did it for 10 years. It's taken a toll. I never stop designing. It's a subconscious thing, which is a good way to design and a good place to solve a lot of problems..." Niermann Weeks designs borrow elements from the past and reinterprets them to fit current lifestyles, aesthetically relating to both traditional and contemporary interiors. All designs are available at through-the-trade designer showrooms in the USA and Canada.Betsy Barmat Stires designed the kitchen of the 2016 DC Design House using our Palissy Ceiling Fixture as the island light, as well as a pair of our Balustrade Lamps in the windows, featured here in this Washington Post Home and Garden article.

The Danieli Chandelier was inspired by a 19th century fixture. Despite many layers of “over the top” decorative details, Joe Niermann saw promise in the framework underneath. He whittled away at the design and reduced it to the basic underlying structure. The final design includes a gracefully sweeping frame enhanced by an oxidized silver leaf finish and glass crystals applied to the frame.Chandeliers were the first thing Joe Niermann designed. And it was five years before he sold one. Now the bejeweled iron and crystal silhouettes are his signature. "I don't really care for the crystals, one way or the other," said Niermann, though millions of them are stored in large paint buckets in the Millersville strip mall he converted into the Niermann Weeks company factory. "I want the design to be strong enough so that it doesn't need crystals." But it is the crystals — from tiny, man-made beads imported from the Czech Republic to the fist-sized rock crystals found in nature — that identify Niermann's light fixtures, some as small as a wall sconce and others 6 feet tall and 6 feet across and weighing 300 pounds.

The crystals give each piece a delicate and magical character. And because a chandelier can be seen from so many different angles — from the side, from above, from below — they give each of those points of view a different complexity and offer fresh surprises. "I see the designs that come out of my husband and my children's brains, and I wonder, 'Where did that come from?'" says Eleanor McKay, who shepherds this family-owned business. Both daughters, Eleanor Niermann, 40, and Claire Niermann, 37, have worked in the shop since they were youngsters and now share design duties with their father. McKay met Niermann while curating exhibits for the Wisconsin Historical Society. Though he was in the insurance business, he was fascinated by the finishes on fine antiques, and he volunteered to help with restoration. Soon enough, people were asking Niermann to repair their antiques or to copy a piece or make a second one. The couple married, and she used her education in library science and history to gather the research that helped him ground his early designs.

They moved to Memphis, Tenn., where she continued to curate at the University of Memphis and he continued to restore furniture. It turned out to be more lucrative than staging exhibits. "It was the early '70s, and the funding from the outside work was so much steadier," said McKay. She and her husband teamed with Mike Weeks, a Memphis blacksmith and metal sculptor, and the partners began the business by specializing in metal tables and chandeliers. "I didn't have a job when we moved to Memphis, so I walked into a consignment shop," said Niermann. chandelier fixture or chattel"And they asked me if I could repair this iron-and-crystal chandelier. chandelier restaurant ischiaIt was like a whole world opened up to me." chandelier betim mg

When the business began in 1978, the partners were operating out of a Memphis mansion they were in the process of restoring, selling out of a back room. The first thing Niermann designed was his own iron-and-crystal chandelier, but nobody wanted to buy it at first. Today, it is his biggest seller. For years, it was his reproduction English country furniture that kept the company afloat. It was slow going, but soon the designs drew the attention of affluent homeowners and influential designers The firm relocated to Annapolis in 1984. McKay and Niermann had been married in Bowie and her parents lived there, so it was home. In addition, McKay had gotten a job with the Library of Congress, and her husband followed her. Meanwhile, Niermann's design business had grown to 35 people and the first-month sales reached $40,000. "It was such a fabulous amount of money," said McKay. "We couldn't believe it. And it supported us all." McKay and Niermann bought out Weeks in the mid-1990s and today, despite a rough ride through the recession, the Millersville factory produces 1,600 to 1,700 chandeliers and light fixtures a year, at prices from $2,000 to $25,000.

And that doesn't include the metal and glass tables or the wood furniture. "We get knocked off a lot," said McKay, and the company has resorted to patenting some of its designs. But the flip side is, the company must "sign" each piece because they so closely resemble their European Classic (1770 to 1840) antecedents that they often end up in antique sales. Niermann's designs are inspired by what he sees when he and his wife travel. He makes sketches, and she takes pictures. The curves in the dome of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, for example, inspired the Crevecoeur chandelier. McKay calls her husband's chandeliers "architectural jewelry," and says that customers often save up to be able to purchase a luxury piece of lighting that will set the tone for a room, staircase or foyer. "We are a fashion industry, there is no question about it," said McKay. Claire Niermann describes one of her father's chandeliers, the Avignon, as "a woman in a simple Chanel dress, wearing a string of pearls."