August 13th, 2007
Crystal Or Glass Chandelier – What To Choose?
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Sometimes passing by lighting or a home decoration store you cannot resist the desire to enter inside and look at the crystal chandelier or a wine glass that caught your attention. Maybe you can’t explain to yourself what made you do so, but the explanation is simple – you were attracted by the magic glitter of crystal.
However, we are often unaware who, how and where made that crystal, while this useful information could help us to choose between hundreds of types of this wonderful material.
Crystal (from Greek “krystallos”) is a special type of glass of a high degree of brilliance and optical purity. The brilliance of cut crystal comes from the refraction of light passing through a prism. We can spot similar effect in rainbow formation.
The most widely spread types of crystal are:
* Rock crystal – natural crystal mined from the earth, cannot be manufactured therefore is the most expensive one
* Bohemian crystal – lead-free crystal
* Lead crystal – considered the finest crystal in the world. The most famous manufacturer of this type of crystal is Swarovski AG in the Austrian Alps. Its brand crystal “STRASS” is characterized not only by its clear and brilliant structure but also by razor-sharp cutting of facets that makes it look like a real diamond. Lead content is in excess of 30%.
In Europe… read on.
My name is Benjamin Stuart, welcome to 