I don’t often see things that I absolutely adore. This includes birds, sofas and potential dating material. However, when I got an email from Restoration Hardware containing photos of this little beauty, I fell in love.

I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine a better use for such a crappy cage. The use of this terribly designed cage has raised it to true gorgeousness. As a cage? It’s horrible. As a chandelier? Stunning. I mean really. Look at it! I’m not big on Baroque style stuff with lots of crap hanging all over the place, large print floral fabric or gold-plated anything. The floor in my condo is slate tile. It’s stone for cripes sake! But this damned lamp took me down.

It’s not just because it’s a bird-related item either. I just simply love the lines of it. It is the contrast between the sparkly crystals enclosed in the coldness and the rigidity of the bronzed cage. It’s cool. It has character. It’s bizarre without being wacky. And I like that. It takes itself seriously, but not so much so that it doesn’t have a sense of humor.

I wrote a piece about the history of bird cages for Birds USA, BT’s annual roundup magazine for the basics of taking care of birds this past January.

I was very flattered to have been asked to write it and it was a hefty piece, about two thousand words. I think I did a pretty good job on it. But in order to write the piece without sounding like every other person who has written about bird cages in the past, I had to find an angle, so I wrote about how they begin as utilitarian, square, box-like structures, moved on into decorative pieces and now they have returned to the clean lines they once were.

Consequently, I learned one hell of a lot about bird cages. Some bird cages were built to be works of art and used with or without birds. Most were not such a hot idea as cages for birds, and the round cage was one of the worst ideas anyone ever came up with. But some were absolutely gorgeous as decorative pieces. The concept of the round cage was one of these bone-headed ideas. Attractive, but a simply lousy idea if you kept birds.

The use of the round cage in this particular function creates a “negative space” around the chandelier. It’s an object, but you can see through it.

I posted this photo on Facebook and people went nuts. I went nuts. And of course, the Can I make one of these because I’m too damned cheap to pay the freight on the outrageous cost of it? thought came to mind. I don’t know, but if I can figure it out, I’m moving on from the feather scarves and going into business. Because this is one hell of an idea.

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