With a dedication to old-world craftsmanship, Khalima Lights founders Robert & Lindsay MacLeod create custom lanterns and light fixtures, from historical replicas to contemporary copper designs
Copper dust rains down on Lindsay MacLeod’s sinewy arms and shoulders, blending into her auburn dreads as she sands cut metal. Next, she’ll move to a manual press brake to bend precise corners before soldering them with a jeweler’s torch, her fingers stained green from the work. In this smith’s practiced hands, a simple copper sheet has found new life as a radiant lantern ready to herald a family home.
Inside the compact workshop behind their Wadmalaw Island house, Khalima Lights cofounders Lindsay and Robert MacLeod handcraft stunning custom lanterns to fit their clients’ specific tastes and parameters. “We make special and unique pieces of functional art,” explains Lindsay, the great granddaughter of a New York coppersmith. Installed on upscale properties from South of Broad to the Sea Islands, their designs often draw from the Holy City’s historical architecture and the Lowcountry’s natural charms.
The Khalima portfolio shines with a collection of bespoke gas and electrical fixtures tailored to each site, from a grand Victorian lantern on a mustache bracket for a Legare Street residence to an Edmondston-Alston House replica illuminating a wharf district gate. For a neighbor’s house on Wadmalaw Sound, the artisans crafted three gorgeous six-sided pendants adorned with repoussé river birch leaves. And at the restored Charles Drayton House on East Battery, they installed an elegant suite of matching lanterns crowned by brass leaf clusters. (Khalima also offers a made-to-order catalog of UL-listed sculptural sconces, pendants, and chandeliers online.)
“What we do is very hands-on and labor intensive, but we feel called to preserve this traditional craft,” says Lindsay, who began apprenticing under longtime local coppersmith John Gantt when she was 24 and he was in his 80s. Under his tutelage, the eager artist learned to conceptualize, scale, build, and wire copper fixtures. In 2007, Lindsay and Robert, a coppersmith and welder with a background in construction, then designed their first light, a cluster of woodland-inspired curved cage pendants wrapped in delicate handmade paper for their son’s nursery. Still available in their online shop, the “Firefly” and “Camellia” fixtures launched the couple into business.
While Khalima has turned up the flame on their work in the last 10 years, connecting with notable interior designers, architects, and home builders, the spiritual pair keeps a personal connection in every project. Lindsay and Robert revered their mentor not only for his skill but also his ability to incorporate personal touches for his clients. “He made lights that became heirlooms. That’s what we want to continue,” she says. “We’ve purposely kept our business on the smaller side, because it allows our family to be together in the place that inspires us and to focus on the details of our craft.”
Brilliant Meaning: Khalima is an Arabic word to express “the light of God.”
Around Town: Lindsay and Robert have also created lights for Firefly Distillery, a custom tap and bar for The Gin Joint, sconces for Anson Restaurant, mailboxes for Kiawah Island, and brass lamps for Brasserie la Banque.
Pet Project: The couple is working with local organizations to protect and preserve original John Gantt lanterns in and around Charleston. “It’s our goal to make sure that his legacy and work is not lost as homes and businesses change hands and undergo renovations,” Lindsay notes.
Artist Fellowship: Khalima Lights often works with other local artisans, including Mike du Bois of du Bois Metalworks for wrought-iron brackets, Bob Hines at Hines Studios for stained and slumped glass, and Jason Petitpain of Lost Art Found for glass of all sorts.
More: khalimalights.com
Photographs by courtesy of Khalima Lights & (3) Nickie Stone
