Ceiling Light Fixture

Edward F. Caldwell & Co. was one of America’s most prominent lighting and furnishing firms in the early twentieth century. They played a leading role in the transition from designing lights for gas, oil, or candle flames to electricity. George Booth contracted with Caldwell & Co. in 1908 to supply the vast majority of the lighting fixtures and free-standing lamps for his new home, Cranbrook House, which was wired for electricity during the building process, in anticipation of access to power not then available in Bloomfield Hills. When Cranbrook House was extended in 1917, George Booth returned to Caldwell & Co. for the necessary fixtures.

This pair of ceiling fixtures was placed in hallways in the east wing of the house, one in the service stairhall, the other in the vestibule outside the entrance to Ellen Scripps Booth's bedroom suite. The design, consisting of a wide flat ring of leaves or pointed petals ringing a small circle of upright petals, suggests a blooming flower with a lightbulb at its heart. Similar fixtures, placed elswhere in the house, were given different finishes in shades of gold and "antique iron," a matte black tone, to suit each fixture to its setting (see CEC 1152 and CEC 1163).

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
September 2024