Posts Tagged Crystal
Swarovski descendant launches crystal jewelry line – BostonHerald.com
DALLAS – As a member of the famed Austrian crystal family, Vanessa Swarovski Piedra grew up around beautiful sparkling objects. Now she’s creating a few of her own.
Swarovski Piedra, the great-great-granddaughter of
Swarovski Corp. founder Daniel Swarovski, launched a jewelry collection this fall featuring Swarovski crystals under her own brand, VSP. And plans for the brand extend beyond jewelry, including candles, crystal-studded pashminas and throws, and crystal-adorned furniture.
Swarovski Piedra grew up near the Swarovski headquarters in Wattens, Austria, located just outside of Innsbruck, surrounded with that tradition every day: Her father is chief executive officer of Swarovski.
At age 14 she spent a summer learning goldsmithing at the Design Institute of Rome.
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Swarovski descendant launches crystal jewelry line – BostonHerald.com
Watching the ball drop a must for New Year’s | thenews-messenger.com | The News-Messenger
With New Year’s Eve being only two days away, my thoughts travel to all of the New Year’s Eves of my past. No matter how my family rings in the new year, watching the famous ball drop in Times Square in New York City is a must. We always have our television tuned into that iconic New Year’s celebration as midnight approaches.
As I pondered today’s column, I started wondering about the history of these Times Square parties. My intrigue led me to www.timessquarenyc.org/nye/nye_history.html where I uncovered some very fascinating facts surrounding this New Year’s tradition that has not only captivated a nation, but an entire world.
The first-ever Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration took place on Dec. 31, 1904. The day started with a street festival that gave way to a dazzling fireworks display which was set off at the base of the impressive Times Tower at the intersection of 42nd Street, Broadway and 7th Avenue in New York City. As 1905 rang in, the sounds of cheering and noisemakers from the more than 200,000 people gathered could be heard 30 miles away. The events of the day were such a resounding success that Times Square immediately became known as “the place to be” to usher in the new year. And so, a tradition was born.
Much to the frustration of the coordinators of this newfound party, the fireworks display was banned two years later for the 1907 celebration. That did not stop Alfred Ochs, owner of the New York Times, who was an integral part in establishing this annual event in Times Square. He arranged to have an iron and wood ball, weighing 700 pounds, measuring 5 feet in diameter, and illuminated with one hundred 25-watt bulbs, suspended on the flagpole atop One Times Square. Precisely at midnight, the sphere was lowered to signal the start of a new year.
Throughout history, the ball has been replaced and upgraded several times. The first of these came in 1920 when a 400-pound wrought iron ball replaced the iron and wood ball. Again in 1955, this was replaced with a much lighter 200 pound aluminum ball, which was used until the 1980s.
At that time, red lights were added along with a green stem to symbolize an apple. This played nicely into the “I Love New York” marketing campaign which embraced New York City between the years of 1981 and 1988. Seven years later, the red lights and stem disappeared and the traditional white lights were once again used.
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Watching the ball drop a must for New Year’s | thenews-messenger.com | The News-Messenger
Crystal tips – Times Online
Nadja Swarovski and Robert Burke.
Spring 2008 Ready-to-Wear
Michael Kors – Backstage
One can’t help having certain expectations about Nadja Swarovski, the woman who, as it were, crystallised the world. In the flesh, will she be all brittle ice queen?
Well, no, not at all. Swarovski’s vice-president of communications and heiress to a billion-dollar fortune is as nice and real-life as can be. She’s apologetic, too, when we meet at her airy, lime-green-carpeted offices in Conduit Street, London. Apologetic because she’s feeling just a little “all over the place” at the moment. Having just returned from the company’s Austrian HQ, she is about to jet off to America to host the genius Crystal Palace exhibition she established in 2002 (a show where designers such as Ron Arad and Zaha Hadid create state-of-the-art, one-off chandeliers from Swarovski crystals) at Design Miami, as main sponsor of the high-profile event. There’s the big move, too. In a couple of weeks, she and her team are changing offices for a much larger space, where all those magnificent chandeliers that have been commissioned over the years can be displayed. “It makes me cry, thinking of the way they’ve always had to go into storage,” Swarovski says. All this while she is also juggling the demands of being a mother to three children below the age of four — the youngest born less than a year ago. “Oh, don’t,” she wails. “It is so hard, leaving them when they’re tiny.” It is hard, too, after the third, to get one’s figure back. “Look,” she says, pinching a millimetre of skin above her waistband, “I can’t fit into any of my clothes. Don’t even look at what I’m wearing. It’s Friday, I’ve cancelled dinner tonight; this is hang-out gear you’ve got me in today.”
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