The Art of Grounding Chandelier by Frankie Cesare

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Perhaps their purpose is more beautiful than that.
to remind us where we come from, while giving us the security … Read more Perhaps their purpose is more beautiful than that.
to remind us where we come from, while giving us the security to grow in directions we have never travelled before.
the art of grounding was born from a yoga practice — from that strange, almost physical sensation of imagining roots extending from the body deep into the earth.
grounding.
not as immobility.
as security strong enough to allow movement.
because real roots do not remain still.
they search. They divide. They change direction. They encounter other roots. Sometimes they intertwine.
and perhaps human relationships are not so different.
we extend something of ourselves toward another person without knowing what we will find.
and occasionally, almost inexplicably, two separate paths recognise one another.
the unfamiliar becomes familiar.
the impossible begins to feel possible.
and somewhere between holding on and letting go, we become grounded.

now look closer.
from a distance, you see branches.
come closer and the illusion disappears.
each single branch is made from more than 500 individual strands of copper wire.
not the entire chandelier.
one branch.
more than 500 strands are gathered together, twisted, separated, divided again into smaller groups, redirected and shaped entirely by hand until a bundle of industrial copper begins to resemble the irregular anatomy of a natural root.
now multiply that process by 20 branches.
more than 10,000 individual strands of wire participate in the 20-branch composition.
thousands of strands repeatedly pass through human hands.
they must be gathered.
twisted.
separated.
divided.
redirected.
opened.
shaped.
and then brought together again until twenty independently created structures begin to behave as one.
there is no mould producing the branches.
there is no machine deciding where a root should divide.
there is no identical branch waiting on a shelf to replace another.
designed by frankie cesare and handcrafted in greece together with his specialised team for f+m fos, the work is built slowly, branch by branch, entirely by hand.
what initially appears wild and spontaneous therefore conceals an extraordinary amount of controlled human labour.
the apparent freedom of the sculpture is built from thousands of deliberate gestures.

why so many wires?
because a root is not a tube.
it does not begin at one thickness and simply end somewhere else.
it divides.
and divides again.
heavy forms become delicate ones. Strong lines disappear into almost weightless endings.
the hundreds of strands allow each branch to make this transition naturally — from a powerful central body into increasingly fine ramifications.
that is what gives the sculpture its strange contradiction:
enormous physical presence from a material that can still appear fragile, nervous and alive.
and because those thousands of wires remain flexible, the story does not end in our workshop.
but we'll come back to that.
how much presence do you want to live with?
we could tell you immediately whether you need 17, 18 or 20 branches.
we would rather ask you something first.
how do you want the artwork to inhabit your room?
some people need air around the objects they love.
they are attracted to restraint, silence and negative space.
others feel completely at ease beside something generous, dramatic and unapologetically present.
neither is more sophisticated.
neither personality is larger than the other.
we simply inhabit space differently.
and this is why choosing the number of branches is not merely choosing a size.

size is not density.
this distinction is essential to understanding the art of grounding.
a 17-branch composition can be opened to almost the same overall spread as a 20-branch composition.
the difference is density.
with 17 branches, more air passes through the sculpture. Negative space becomes more visible. The composition feels lighter and more transparent.
add branches and the outer dimensions do not necessarily need to grow.
instead, the interior becomes richer.
copper overlaps copper.
light passes through additional layers.
shadows intersect.
forms begin to hide behind other forms.
with 20 branches, the sculpture reaches one of its richest and most complex expressions. Signed by maker,labeled by maker,
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