Chandelier

One prescription for looking refreshed and renewed: a yearlong visit to the south of France to receive the tender ministrations of skilled artists. At the moment, though, it's a little hard to say just how brightly the Academy of Music's chandelier, newly returned from its sojourn abroad, glitters and gleams. On Monday, the light - literally an Academy fixture since opening day in 1857 - was raised over the auditorium, cloaked in a huge bag. It will be under wraps until an official unveiling Sept.

When we sold our home, we got into a terrible dispute with the buyers. Our listing with the local multiple-listing service clearly stated that the dining-room chandelier was not included. When our agent obtained an acceptable offer, the contract said nothing about the chandelier. We presumed that the buyers and their agent knew the chandelier was not included because that was what the listing said. Our agent even taped a small sign to the chandelier that said, "Chandelier not included in sale.

If you like assembling things from kits, does Freeman/Fine Arts have a treat for you: a 15-foot crystal chandelier that has been broken down into hundreds of components. All you have to do - after buying it when it goes on the block next week - is reassemble it. There are even instructions. The chandelier is from the Cameo Room on the top floor of the Bellevue- Stratford. It was removed during the ongoing conversion of the hotel into a combination hotel-commercial center called the Bellevue.

It's nearly summer, and the great chandelier that has hung in the Academy of Music for a century and a half is going on a nice, long trip - a cure, really - to the south of France. Yesterday, it was lowered from its high perch near the golden, richly colored mural on the Academy's ceiling, and workers quickly began to disassemble it. In a few days it will be shipped by sea to the town of Gargas, in Provence, to the Mathieu Lustrerie workshop, where it will be the object of a dramatic restoration.

On Oct. 30, Christie's auctioneer Brian Cole took bids in New York on an 18-light silver chandelier. The five-foot-wide, 200-pound chandelier sold for a whopping $1,155,000, double its high estimate, to become the sixth lot of silver to sell for more than $1 million. (The record stands at $1.98 million, paid at Christie's in April for an Italian table fountain, circa 1680.) The chandelier, made in 1837 by Robert Garrard 2d in London, is a thicket of cast ornament: antelopes, foliate scrolls and ducal coronets.

In a ceremony of considerably greater pomp than is unusually afforded a mere lighting fixture, the lights were thrown on in the Academy of Music yesterday to reveal a substantially rebuilt chandelier. Of course, it's not just any lighting fixture. The Academy's pendulous chandelier, punctuated by a golden ball and spear at the bottom, has been an adored kinetic focal point for generations of Philadelphia Orchestra and Nutcracker audiences. Now, newly restored from its 13-month sojourn in the south of France, the chandelier might take some getting used to. Gone are the golden ball and spear, along with other big-boned features added for two decades starting in the 1950s.

The landmark Mickey Rooney's Tabas Hotel was hopping again yesterday, but the scene was far different from the old days, when Frankie Valli, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Bobby Rydell packed them in to Downingtown's version of a borscht-belt resort. Yesterday's crowd did not want to bring down the house - they wanted to take it with them. "Everything goes," said auctioneer Barry Slosberg. "If you see something you want, just yell out. " Helen Ekaro of East Lansdowne took the fountain in the lobby of the Lancaster Avenue landmark.

In a ceremony of considerably greater pomp than is unusually afforded a mere lighting fixture, the lights were thrown on in the Academy of Music yesterday to reveal a substantially rebuilt chandelier. Of course, it's not just any lighting fixture. The Academy's pendulous chandelier, punctuated by a golden ball and spear at the bottom, has been an adored kinetic focal point for generations of Philadelphia Orchestra and Nutcracker audiences. Now, newly restored from its 13-month sojourn in the south of France, the chandelier might take some getting used to. Gone are the golden ball and spear, along with other big-boned features added for two decades starting in the 1950s.

Lambertville, N.J., population 3,906, is going to be a busy village this weekend. Not only is the Rago Arts & Auction Center offering about 1,000 lots of early-20th-century and modern arts and crafts at a two-day sale there, but Stephenson's Auction, of Southampton, Pa., is conducting an on-site sale Saturday of the real estate and contents of a Victorian home just outside of town and of an adjacent barn that formerly housed River Road Antiques &...

When Irma and Lou Malissa decided last year that it was finally time to sell their large house in Rydal and move to smaller space and an easier life, Irma made one thing clear: "I don't want a place that makes me feel old. " Today, the Malissas - Irma is 86, Lou is 87 - have met that goal. Their airy new digs at Rydal Park, where windows reveal a panorama of trees, greenery, and even a waterfall, has refreshed them, they say, and given them a new home to cherish. "You're never sure how things will turn out," says Irma, who now knows she has gained more than she lost in the move.

Complementing this weekend's home shows at the convention centers in Valley Forge, Oaks and Atlantic City are two auctions in Philadelphia that also will afford home-improvement possibilities. At 11 a.m. today as part of the Freeman's Friday series, the auction house at 1808 Chestnut St. will offer more than 125 rugs and carpets at generally affordable prices. They range in size from a Chinese pictorial rug 2 feet, 8 inches by 1 foot, 3 inches to a Southeast Persian Kerman dating to the mid-20th century that is 23 feet, 7 inches by 13 feet, 7 inches.

Brushing aside a decidedly down economy, the Philadelphia Orchestra last night returned to its cradle, the Academy of Music, to raise a substantial sum for both organizations. The 152d Anniversary Concert and Ball grossed about $3.5 million, orchestra leaders said. The total is less than the amount raised in each of the previous two years, though the 150th anniversary was an anomalously generous year, generating added glamor with attendance by Prince Charles and wife Camilla. This year the headliner was James Taylor, who drew about 1,780 patrons to the concert in the Academy and dinner and dancing at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue.

In a ceremony of considerably greater pomp than is unusually afforded a mere lighting fixture, the lights were thrown on in the Academy of Music yesterday to reveal a substantially rebuilt chandelier. Of course, it's not just any lighting fixture. The Academy's pendulous chandelier, punctuated by a golden ball and spear at the bottom, has been an adored kinetic focal point for generations of Philadelphia Orchestra and Nutcracker audiences. Now, newly restored from its 13-month sojourn in the south of France, the chandelier might take some getting used to. Gone are the golden ball and spear, along with other big-boned features added for two decades starting in the 1950s.

In a ceremony of considerably greater pomp than is unusually afforded a mere lighting fixture, the lights were thrown on in the Academy of Music yesterday to reveal a substantially rebuilt chandelier. Of course, it's not just any lighting fixture. The Academy's pendulous chandelier, punctuated by a golden ball and spear at the bottom, has been an adored kinetic focal point for generations of Philadelphia Orchestra and Nutcracker audiences. Now, newly restored from its 13-month sojourn in the south of France, the chandelier might take some getting used to. Gone are the golden ball and spear, along with other big-boned features added for two decades starting in the 1950s.

Two masked phantoms, not one, live beneath the Paris opera house, and each has a musical of his own. One has eye-popping sets, a sung-through plot composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a crashing chandelier and a record-breaking 20 Broadway years. The other Phantom isn't nearly as well-known. He's in a musical called, simply, Phantom, by Arthur Kopit with a Maury Yeston score. It's easy to confuse the two, and some folks did at its opening Friday at New Candlelight Theatre in Ardentown, Del. Yet they couldn't have been too disappointed: While New Candlelight's Phantom lives in the same catacombs as the other one, he's no bargain-basement terrorizer.

One prescription for looking refreshed and renewed: a yearlong visit to the south of France to receive the tender ministrations of skilled artists. At the moment, though, it's a little hard to say just how brightly the Academy of Music's chandelier, newly returned from its sojourn abroad, glitters and gleams. On Monday, the light - literally an Academy fixture since opening day in 1857 - was raised over the auditorium, cloaked in a huge bag. It will be under wraps until an official unveiling Sept.

Somewhere out in the Atlantic, a ship from France carrying an enormous 10,000-crystal chandelier is making its way to Philadelphia. At the same time, in Cheshire, Conn., art conservators are doing detective work to create decorative paintings authentic to 1850s Philadelphia. Carpet and fabric designs are being vetted, chandeliers built. And already scaffolding is up, wood is being ripped out and windows opened in the Academy of Music, where all these elements will coalesce in the next year or so. Actually, the $11.6 million being spent to renovate the Academy takes the form of two separate projects: $10 million to totally renovate the ballroom, and $1.6 million to rebuild the chandelier in the main auditorium.

The Academy of Music visitor whose eyes stray upward might get a shock. Since June, a harsh cluster of utilitarian lighting has become a cheap stand-in for the Academy's beloved glittering chandelier. Actually, the greater stand-in was the chandelier itself. After decades of historically inaccurate additions and adjustments - some dating to its electrification, others much later - the chandelier no longer looked anything like it did on the Academy's opening day in 1857. And so it was dislodged from its perch of a century and a half last summer and shipped to the south of France, where it is being substantially rebuilt.