First We Take Manhattan
The Rockefeller plaza Christmas Tree was crowned by 800 pound star created by Michael Hammers and his studio based in Wesseling, Germany. It contains 25,000 Swarovski crystals and is symbolic of the talent of Hammers as a leading edge artist with regard to applied art in architecture. This integration of the artistic, the expressive and the technical is an extension of Hammers stylistic pursuit of the ideas of he Bauhaus school where a multi-discipline approach to the creative process is part of the functional structure of his studio.
Swarovski Chandelier, Michael Hammers
Hammers has also created the crystal waterfall chandelier at the Rockefeller Center which hangs in the Grand Atrium Lobby. The mandate to Hammers was to create a symbol of the uninterrupted passage of time within an art deco style of the 1930′s. Fourteen thousand Swarovski crystals were used for this commission which required under four months to complete on almost 24/7 basis. The crystal waterfall and its companion piece , a Geode crystal wall on the 67 th floor confirms Hammers as perhaps the pre-eminent art production house of this type in the world because of workmanship, design and use of light and color.
Hammers began as a blacksmith and later as a sculptors apprerentice before developing his own company which has also branched into audiovisual. His work awakens the memory of Heinrich Heine, where a certain sense and weight of irony and disillusion becomes transformed into something timeless, new and creative. Physical structures that also symbolize panache, the witty, the vigorous and slightly bizarre.
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