Great Hall Chandelier

I wanted a large, central chandelier for the Great Hall, one based on a wheel shape.  There are folks out there making and selling working versions of this kind of period light fixture, but I wanted to try my hand at it myself.

Here's what I came up with.

Black polymer clay is brilliant at imitatating wrought iron, so I based my chandelier on that.  I cut a long strip of rolled clay and wrapped it around a metal lid for a circular tin -- it's about 3.5 inches in diameter, I think.  I baked the clay on the tin.

Wait for it to cool totally before you take it off! It's still quite flexible when warm.

Then I made cross bracing from clay rolls and added twists of thin wire to act as eyes for the chain -- one eye at each end of a cross brace.  Then I made little curved "cups" of black clay to hold the white polymer candles.  I used two lengths of black jewellery chain and hung the chandelier from the ceiling using a couple of lengths of wire, each bent into an s curve.

It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly satisfying and was very inexpensive to build!  Next time I'll figure out how to electrify it ...