Steven Handelman, a Santa Barbara-based metalworker, has been making beautiful custom early 20th-century chandeliers, lanterns, sconces, firescreens and other decorative iron since 1973. His work is as beautiful as it is well-designed and well-crafted, and can be seen at the homes and businesses of clients all over California (and the rest of the country).
What really makes Steven & Co's work stand out is not just the high quality of the pieces, but the influences: where some craftspeople are content to concentrate on a single historical or geographic area or style, Handelman's influences range from the Mission Revival to early English designs and, in much of his recent work, plenty of north African / Moroccan detail. Santa Barbara's beautiful Granada Theater, recently reopened after a long restoration project, is a great example of this; Handelman supervised his staff's recreation of more than 250 individual fixtures for this long project, which finished with the reopening of the theater this past February.
Should you be in the area, certainly stop & visit their showroom.
