Mixed media: oak, whitetail shed antler, glass, brass, artificial ivy, programmable LED
This piece exists because I couldn’t buy it. I wanted an antler light for a twelve-foot table, and the market had two offerings: short ones and ugly ones, with considerable overlap between the categories. Everything commercially available was built for a breakfast nook or styled for a hunting lodge gift shop. A twelve-foot table needs a fixture with reach — something long enough to throw light down the whole run without pooling it all in the middle. So I built one.
Most antler chandeliers try to convince you the antlers are the structure. They lash them together into a basket and hang lights off the tangle. This one works the other way around. The structure is honest — three oak boards of equal length, stacked and doing three separate jobs — and the antlers get to just be antlers.
The bottom board carries the light. I cut rings into it sized to seat the flush-mount patio fixtures, so the globes hang below the wood like fruit rather than bolting onto it. Spacing the fixtures along the plank’s full length is what lets the piece serve a long table — light lands evenly down the run instead of piling up in the middle. The middle board is the service layer: cut to give the electrical wiring adequate travel from light to light, fully concealed once the stack is assembled. The top board handles the rigging — cut only where needed to let the wiring run up along the mounting chain harness to the ceiling box, so the whole piece hangs secure without the wiring taking any strain.
The antlers are natural sheds, sourced from an online shed collector, which means no deer gave up anything but last year’s headgear. They mount around the perimeter, branching outward the way they grew. The ivy is unapologetically fake — store-bought plastic trim vine, wound through the tines. In a piece built around wood grain and bone, the artificial greenery is the joke that keeps it from taking itself too seriously.
The bulbs are programmable LEDs, each named and addressed separately. That turns a fixed fixture into an instrument: the room can shift from warm amber lodge light to something considerably stranger without touching a switch. A chandelier that holds still while the light itself changes character.
Total construction is within reach of anyone with a saw, a drill, and patience for wiring. The design has no secrets — the boards do the work, the antlers do the pointing, and the glass does the glowing.