Lighting Industry Leaders: Quoizel

Quoizel originated in New York in 1930 and, until the 1960s, retained its manufacturing specialization as a producer of hurricane lamps. While Quoizel is not a family name, the original owner and designer Michael Chaiken and his successors the Phillips family reflect the close-knit quality of the lighting-manufacturing industry.

Even though Quoizel headquarters are now located in Charleston, SC, and has also established a manufacturing site in China, the company adheres to its slogan “Timeless Lighting” irrespective of location. Its collections are categorized somewhat differently from the industry traditional, transitional, and contemporary classifications. Quoizel fixtures are classified as European, Americana, Contemporary, Modern, and Bohemian.

Specialized collections include a large variety of fixtures based on original Louis Comfort Tiffany designs and a contractual relationship with Lenox Fine China. Quoizel retains its strong sense of American origin and its debt to American design elements. The distinction between Contemporary and Modern categories is an unusual but sensible decision, with the Contemporary category showing traditional glass and metal materials used in new design forms, while the Modern classification stresses the use of newer materials in distinctively functional forms.

The Bohemian category may be the portal through which many retail customers first encounter Quoizel design. The company describes this category as “whimsical,” and so it is. Its largest collection within the Bohemian category is “Salamander,” a line showing Pre-Raphaelite and Arts & Crafts influences both in metal shapes and finishes and in its intriguing art-glass shades. Bohemian fixtures combine a respect for tradition with a gentle sense of humor about its uses.

Quoizel products as a whole show the same respect for the past and recognition of future needs. This strong set of values produces a consistent “Quoizel look” which, combined with the company’s interest in quality, makes Quoizel an excellent resource for shoppers who want lighting consistent with their lifestyle and decorating style all through the house.

How well does Quoizel adhere to its origins and traditions? By continuing to make a classic line of two dozen hurricane-style lamps. Hurricanes, originally chimneyed lanterns, weathered the adaptation to electricity without losing their particularly charming qualities—ruffled glass shades, hand-painted floral designs, lamp-bases with more detail than one would think possible in from a glass-manufacturer.

For customers interested in keeping this remarkable tradition going, Quoizel hurricane lamps range from the very American Abigail Adams fixtures to those showing French and other European influences. Names are highly evocative: Americana Grand Dream, Frosted Gold-Polished French, and Satin-Lace. As their own descriptions point out, sharing their origins contributes to the future heritage-treasures of customers’ own families.

The Quoizel name has been so well-known in the lighting industry that the company launched its very first identifying logo in the 1990s after seventy-five years of business.

Lighting Industry Leaders: Kichler

Kichler, Quoizel and Murray Feiss share some interesting common elements: small local beginnings, hard work, and the continuity of family ownership. Although all three companies have grown enormously, the importance of family leadership is such that, on one company timeline, owners (father and son) are identified only by first names. When you buy a lighting fixture from Kichler, Quoizel, or Murray Feiss Lighting, you acquire a family history as well, not just the brand name of a large impersonal company. The story of the lighting industry is a story about people, not just lighting fixtures.

ABOUT KICHLER LIGHTING

Kichler Lighting began as a small decorative lighting business in Cleveland OH. Bought in 1954 by Sam Minoff, it kept its original name in honor of its founder, Leonard Kichler. Sam Minoff, a member of the Lighting Hall of Fame and inaugural winner of the ARTS Lifetime Award, clearly wanted to preserve Kichler’s historical values, which he summarized as: customer care, product value, and design excellence.

Now a world leader in the decorative lighting industry, Kichler remains a Cleveland family company. Kichler’s collections include traditional, transitional, and contemporary lighting. Customers can explore complete collections online by room, function, or style. Kichler’s collections reflect a distinctive strong interest in the classic structural forms that have always distinguished great architecture and other enduring forms of design. Collections such as “Structures” and “Fallon” exhibit a playful curiosity about all the different ways these classic principles can be used in lighting design.

Special attention to design is displayed in its Smithsonian Collection, for which designers searched the Institution’s public and non-public collections to bring historically-accurate details to their Renwick, Joseph Henry, and Titus collections. The Renwick collection honors James Renwick, architect of the original Smithsonian Institution building, now nicknamed “the Castle.” Renwick lighting reflects the architect’s fascination with the Romanesque style. Joseph Henry, first Secretary of the Smithsonian, and William D. Titus, a Brooklyn inventor, encouraged technological innovation, as does the Kichler Company to this day.

In addition to its varied collections of interior residential lighting fixtures, Kichler takes a particular interest in landscape lighting. The company offers certified training in outdoor lighting to landscape and lighting designers and contractors. Both indoor and outdoor lighting by Kichler has kept pace with environmental and energy concerns, offering innovative products in low-voltage, solar and other energy-saving areas. Part of this effort is reflected in its large collection of lighted ceiling fans, suitable to many types of residential décor.

Kichler Lighting combines long-held family principles of service to consumers with respect for classic design and its place in both historical and contemporary lighting. Up next in the series, Quoizel lighting.

Kitchen Lighting Advice

Whether you are lighting a new kitchen or redecorating your present one, the best advice is: think about lighting early in the process. We call it the “too little, too late too dark”syndrome. Customers appear close to the end of the project—and the end of their budget—wanting, but unable to determine clearly, lighting to “go with” their other decisions.

Surprisingly, in the store’s view, this was not just a matter of money. The salesman explained that, because so many elements of a kitchen occupy a permanent place, lighting needs to be thought out ahead of time. (Anyone who has ever turned on the range-hood light to view the contents of the freezer would agree.) If Kitchen lighting decisions are left to the last, results may be less satisfactory and more expensive than early decision would allow.

Like bathrooms, kitchens need good, bright light for a variety of tasks. New kitchen designs, like those for bathrooms, feature increased and creative uses of daylight which must be taken into consideration when planning for lighting.

One of the important features of kitchen-planning is accommodating good traffic-flow; and this is the stage at which lighting should be planned. If the kitchen is eat-in, how does one light the room so that the food-preparation area is less visible during the meal? If you’re washing lettuce, how close is the counter to dry it on? If guests always gather in the kitchen, can you still get to the oven without trampling them? Do boots and coats compete with more intentional decorating? Lighting can be used to attract people to certain areas and away from others, more in the kitchen than in any other room.

What kinds of lighting? A wonderful abundance. In these eclectic times, kitchens allow the combination of all kinds of lighting. Large fluorescent ceiling fixtures still provide reliable room-wide ambient light, although pendant and other area-lighting fixtures show great popularity, sometimes as the major light-source and most often over the family table.

Recessed or ready-to-mount spotlights and pin-point track-lighting seem made just for kitchens. On the ceiling, in soffits or installed under cupboards, they allow for just about any situation in which you really need to see what you are doing. Good lighting transforms counters into self-contained work-stations, making your counter-space functional in a greater variety of ways.

Incorporating lighting decisions into overall kitchen planning lets you spend less on lighting and spend less as you use it. Deciding traffic flow and establishing what work will be done on counters or an island lets you light more selectively and use more diffuse lighting less. When the task is over, the specialty lighting goes off, using less energy.

The Department of Energy’s “Energy Star” program reminds consumers that replacing incandescent light bulbs with more efficient kinds in our most-used rooms will save substantial amounts of energy. Looking at your kitchen in terms of area-lighting eases the energy-burden in this frequently-occupied room, often the busiest in your home.

Flexibility, focus, and functionality in today’s lighting all contribute to lighting kitchens in productive and economical ways. Incorporating lighting decisions early in your decorating plans can help make the busiest room in your house an even happier place for you and your family to spend time.

Popular Bathroom Lighting Styles

Today’s bathroom decorating strategies unpack the word “bathroom” and reset the “room” part in capital letters. Gone are the banks of movie-star mirror lights, and exiting right behind them are the hard-edged European bath-as-lab fixtures that delighted designers within recent memory.

Bathroom design responds to two recent trends in overall design: the amenities of a gracious older house and concerns about water and other energy conservation. The impacts on bathroom lighting are clear and worth noting.

New designs emphasize area-definition in larger-than-before bathrooms. Toilet and bidet, twin sinks, shower and/or tub are screened from each other, although partitions are frequently translucent or transparent. Daylight is incorporated into many bathroom designs—windows over the tub or in a dressing-area, high windows over more private areas, and skylights in abundance. Large mirrors figure strongly in these designs, no longer restricted to the wall medicine-cabinet (think free-standing instead). Increased natural light affects lighting-design, and therefore new-home owners need to consider the differing light-needs of day and night.

As bathrooms become re-defined, lines blur between fixtures used there and in other rooms. Current design magazines suggest, in addition to the expected translucent ceiling fixtures used for years, recessed soffit-lighting, track-lighting, sconces on each side of the larger mirror, pendant ceiling fixtures and even the occasional small chandelier. As used to be the case in some old American houses, and remains the case in some old European ones, the bathroom becomes a room in which one bathes, with other functions given space in an adjoining or nearby room. New bathrooms can provide interesting areas of direct and reflected light, reflections being warm and soft, more similar to other rooms in the house than in the past.

Those updating a small windowless bathroom can still benefit from the wide variety of creative bathroom-lighting solutions currently available. Sealed lights for showers can be used in either ceilings or walls. Recessed lighting can be installed in ceilings, soffits, or walls, surrounding the vanity area with a halo of light, ranging from soft and warm to brilliant and intense. Larger mirror areas increase reflection and, this year, practically demand sconces on each side. Since they are larger than in the past and can deliver more light, consider placement of sconces carefully, so that they are high enough to broadcast light but not so high as to create the facial-shadows often caused by overhead lighting.

Changing the quality of light in a small bathroom also makes an excellent update. Replace old incandescent bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescents or other enhanced- or full-spectrum light-bulbs to bring a stronger “daylight” feel to bathroom light. Consider adding a small lamp to provide the old-fashioned glow of a room-where-one-bathes.

The biggest message in bathroom lighting today is flexibility. Just as one can change to mood or appearance of other rooms with flexible lighting, similar atmospheric chances are welcome in the bathroom. Whether your bathroom accommodates Grandma’s chestnut dresser and an oriental rug or just one person, bring your individuality to lighting the room. A dimmer switch can enhance the relaxing quiet of a long soak in the tub. Lights in the shower provide adequate illumination to shave—at last! Love to read in the tub? Consider tiny track lights that let you luxuriate in both suds and a best-seller.

The bathroom is more than just another room in the house. Treat it with the enthusiasm and creativity that makes the rest of your home so attractive and welcoming.