Four materials across eleven fittings: lead-free crystal, mouth-blown glass, solid brass and powder-coated steel. Each behaves differently over time and each wants a different cloth.
What each material does
| Material | Where | Over time |
|---|---|---|
| Hand-cut lead-free crystal | All Shard drops | Does not yellow or cloud. Chips at the tip if knocked against a hard edge. |
| Mouth-blown opal glass | Constellation, opal | Stable. Shows fingerprints and cooking film more than any other surface here. |
| Mouth-blown smoked glass | Constellation, smoke | Stable. Shows dust plainly because you can see through it. |
| Solid brass, antique bronze | Shard collars, canopies, bars; Constellation brass stems | Darkens unevenly. Will not flake. Comes back with a cloth if you want it brighter. |
| Powder-coated steel | Constellation black stems and canopies | Stable matt black. Scratches show as a lighter line and cannot be polished out. |
| Twisted fabric flex | All Shard drops | Collects dust in the weave. Wipe along the twist, not against it. |
Cleaning
Crystal
Switch it off and let it cool first — a cold cloth on a warm crystal is how they crack. Then a dry microfibre cloth, or a barely damp one with nothing in the water. No glass cleaner: the ammonia in most of them will dull the antique bronze on the collar a few centimetres away.
Support the crystal in one hand while you wipe with the other. The collar takes the weight of the crystal in use, not the sideways load of a hand pushing at it.
Glass globes
Same rule on temperature. Opal takes a damp cloth and a dry buff; smoked wants dry only, because a damp cloth leaves streaks you can see straight through. If a globe needs more than that, it unscrews from the stem — wash it in warm water with a drop of detergent, dry it fully, and do not put it back until it is dry inside as well as out.
Brass and bronze
Dry cloth. That is all it needs, and that is all it should get. Brass polish and wadding will lift the antique finish off in patches and cannot be undone — we cannot re-finish a collar that has been polished.
Lamps
- Shard drops use an integrated LED. It is not user-replaceable. Rated for roughly 25,000 hours, which is about fifteen years at four hours a day.
- Constellation globes use G9 LED capsules, supplied fitted. Replace with 3 W, 2700 K G9 LED — a higher wattage will run hot inside a closed globe.
- Everything is dimmable on a trailing-edge dimmer. A leading-edge dimmer will flicker or buzz. If your existing dimmer is more than about ten years old, assume it is leading-edge.
If a drop stops working
On a multi-drop fitting, one dark drop is almost always the connection at the collar rather than the LED. Email us before you buy anything — info@nalqeris.com — and we will send the part and the two-minute fix.
What is not a fault
- Facet angles differing between drops on the same fitting. They are cut by hand.
- Small bubbles or slight thickness variation in a mouth-blown globe.
- Brass darkening, unevenly, in the first year.
- A dimmer buzzing at the very bottom of its range.
Broken stitching on a flex, a collar that will not grip, a globe that arrives chipped and hardware that fails are faults, and we replace them. See the refund policy.