shell chandelier - an homage to coastal living

I grew up in a coastal state, Mississippi. My home town was Jackson, nowhere near the Gulf, but we got tons of fresh, not frozen, seafood.... shrimp, crab meat, oysters, fish. I have all of my grandmother's old recipes for things like crab imperial, shrimp salad and crab maison. I now live in Tennessee, and there are so many good things about my new, now permanent, home but fresh seafood is generally not an option. And I miss it.

It was on a recent visit to the Mississippi Delta that I stayed in the home of an old college girlfriend. She had the chandelier pictured in a hallway above that I ran across on the Debut blog. My friend told me she purchased the fixture at Anthropologie, but I can't find it on their web site any longer. If you were interested, you might be able to call your local store and find one.

The moment I laid eyes on it, however, I knew I had just seen something similar but couldn't put my finger on it until I got back to Tennessee and was going through a back issue of Garden and Gun... and there it was in the Made in the South Awards issue (Dec '10/Jan '11). It's made by Lowcountry Originals, a South Carolina company. Their pieces are all handmade with things like shells, reeds and driftwood. Demand is high, so order yours quickly to get on the list.

Either one would be right at home in my dining room and both are totally dreamy. Sadly, Tennessee is land locked, but for a girl who grew up eating fresh raw oysters and oysters Rockefeller, it's a perfect fit.