Lot Essay
These fanciful chandeliers were formally part of a large suite of lighting removed from the dining room of the John Severance home located near Cleveland, Ohio. John L. Severance (d. 1936), a wealthy businessman and patron of the arts, is perhaps best known for building Severance Hall to house the Cleveland Orchestra. Longwood, as his 200 acre estate was known, was completed in the English Tudor style in 1910. The order for the present chandeliers, dated December 1914, would have certainly coincided with ongoing design efforts to decorate the opulent interiors. Interestingly, a larger variant of this design is the central feature of the Music Room of the Rockefeller Estate, Kykuit in New York's Hudson Valley.