On the way to Colonial Williamsburg for a family vacation this past memorial day weekend, my family and I “just happened to” be passing right by our friends at the foundry that’s making a big custom order of lanterns for Remains. My wife and children viewed this coincidence with narrowed eyes and a surprising lack of enthusiasm. What the heck?

I pressed on and delivered the group to a tour of the 100 year old plant; who doesn’t love a factory tour? Crucibles of molten metal, dudes operating heavy machinery, layers of dust, whoopee! These folks still use ancient, basic sand molding techniques, but also have a sophisticated array of modern tooling as well. They developed the patterns from our computer models, scaled, stretched, and shrunk as needed, cast them in yellow brass and machined all the critical tolerances. The result is that the lights are all quite lovely.

Here’s a few views of their immense pattern library, some dating back to the early days of the 20th Century

The raw castings of our fixtures

The “dry-fit” of the wall mounted version

Everyone left, in spite of their misgivings much impressed, slightly grubbier, and with a souvenir pair of safety glasses.

One of the biggest benefits of using a local vendor is the ability to visit the job in process. That’s a bit more difficult when they are 6000 miles away.

-David Calligeros