When Casey Scramstad looks at a chandelier, he can dissect it with his eyes. And, piece by piece, he knows exactly how to put it back together—from the hanging crystal baubles right to the top of the stem, which holds within it a network of wires, funnelling energy along the arms to each and every bulb. During his 22-year career as a lighting expert, chandelier aficionado, and antique restorer, Scramstad has built and worked on tens of thousands of chandeliers, so he knows them well. “When I’m reviving a piece, I’m giving it a second lease on life,” explains the tattooed talent. “I’ve always had an affinity for everything turn-of-the-century. I always felt I was born in the wrong time.” A true appreciation for things well made is the foundation for Scramstad’s work; to call him a traditionalist would be an understatement.
Scramstad’s passion for the past is obvious when you step inside Restoration House, his studio and shop on Dunbar Street on Vancouver’s west side. He spent three months personally renovating the store earlier this year with stained pine floors and high iron archway windows to create a “Victorian, turn-of-the-century feel.” Inside, consignment items mingle with those restored by Scramstad himself, including many Edwardian and French Country antiques, along with vintage fifties and sixties chrome and plastic fibreglass lamps. A weathered old globe sits on a table beside an antiquated typewriter, and traditional French, Venetian, English chandeliers hang high overhead. The store is an antique-lover’s treasure-trove, akin to an art gallery. And, undeniably, there is an art to the craft of reparation.
Though Scramstad shakes his head at the notion of calling himself an artist, he does have an artistic pedigree: his great-great-great-uncle was John Constable, the English Romantic painter. “I suppose I consider myself as having art in my blood,” he jokes. It makes sense, then, that one of his career highlights was participating in an art piece. In 2005, Scramstad worked behind the scenes with artist Rodney Graham to reconstruct the spine of a crystal chandelier that had some very specific requirements. Graham wanted the chandelier to be twisted up about a hundred times, then let go to spin by the force of its own inertia alone. “I built the spine so that it would be able to accommodate being wound up that many times,” explains Scramstad. “Otherwise you couldn’t do it because the wire would all snap.” Graham had the whole event filmed with a 35 mm camera, and Torqued Chandelier Release went on to tour some of the art world’s biggest venues. The chandelier itself is a technical feat of strength and artistry, and on film the grainy, spinning enigma looks like something out of angelic orders.
While Torqued Chandelier Release was a project seen by the world, many pieces Scramstad has worked on have had comparatively few eyes on them in their lifetime. “People bring me beautiful fixtures that have been up in their attics and basements for 30 years that they took down and replaced with something from IKEA,” he says. Or, they will come into the shop and ask him to commit heinous repairs on objects of value and classic beauty. People have walked through his doors with Napoleonic light fixtures and asked him to paint them. “Paint it!” he exclaims. “Like, want me to go hit it with some Krylon?” The natural patina of an object, he argues, is where its true beauty lies.
“You can pay $6,000 for a new chandelier that is badly cast, badly fit together,” he explains. “But if you hang a French chandelier, it will give a completely different feel. It will bring a sense of history or lineage to the room, a sense of antiquity … You can take two fixtures that are very similar, one antique and one new, hang them side by side, and I guarantee you will gravitate towards the French one. And you will probably spend less on it in the long run.” From this lighting expert, his artistic valuation of a fixture is enough to convert even the most loyal IKEA-lover.
