Art deco metalsmith: ‘Our copies look better than the originals’

Metalsmith James Pessy is crazy about all things art deco.

So gaga is he that he spent five years crafting a contemporary American art deco chandelier, star-shaped with protruding frosted and acrylic spikes, in the style of C.J. Weinstein Co., a 1920s importing and lighting manufacturer that was based in New York City.

The lighting fixture, which weighs about 500 pounds and is priced at $27,500, dangles from the ceiling in his Irvine showroom, Art Deco Decor.

“The next one I make, I’m going to drill a hole in each spike and put lighting into each one,” he says with a grin. “I love making this stuff.”

Pessy, a clean-cut Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, is an ardent admirer of art deco and art nouveau. For over 30 years, he’s developed a method of reproducing pieces from these eras.

Art deco, the decorative style of the 1920s and 1930s, features geometric designs and bold colors. Nouveau art is a design style dating to the late 19th century that is known for curved lines and foliate forms.

His two-story shop in a business complex off Irvine Center Drive, brims with an assortment of over 3,000 fixtures, including antique chandeliers, lamps, wall sconces, sculptures, mirrors and more.

Pessy, a collector and manufacturer of sculpture and lighting, has had work featured in hotels, casinos and restaurants, and he’s made custom products for renowned designers around the world, including Kelly Wearstler.

Pessy has crafted pieces for musicians Rod Stewart and Dave Navarro, magazine publisher Larry Flynt and actress Whoopi Goldberg, and made bar tables for Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood and light fixtures for The Ritz-Carlton Residences at Waikiki Beach.

And he can walk into department store Nordstrom at The Shops at Mission Viejo and point to wrought iron light fixtures he was commissioned to create.

“I’ll see them and say to myself, ‘I made that,’” he said.

In the beginning, Pessy, a Pittsburgh native, loved working with his hands and studying art. He built a motorcycle with his brother that is now displayed in his shop’s factory, and he would eventually own his own Corvette restoration business.

At 17, he enlisted in the Marines, fought in Vietnam and returned to the U.S. at 22. He moved to London for two years and became a self-taught artist, studying the art deco aesthetic. He appreciated the architectural style’s simplified forms and geometric ornamentation.

Art deco, he noted, represented luxury, glamour and technological progress, but its popularity waned after World War II, when a generation of designers turned to less decorative buildings of steel and glass.

To feed his habit, Pessy would travel the world to import and export antiques. He’d fly to New York City and hit every gallery in an effort to sell his antique reproductions.

“I would wear out a pair of shoes in about a week,” he said.

Art Deco Decor, which Pessy founded 26 years ago in Laguna Hills but moved to the showroom in Irvine 11 years ago, offers custom lighting, antique restoration and consultations. He is aided in running the business by electrical engineer and manager Eric Prado and Pessy’s wife of 25 years, Candice.

To make a reproduction, say, of prominent Romanian art deco sculptor Demetre Chiparus’ “Egyptian Dancer” figurine, which is valued at around $5,000, Pessy would use the lost-wax casting process, whereby a metal sculpture, often bronze, is cast from an original. It’s a three to four-week process that results in a custom-antique finish. Such pieces can fetch nearly $1,400.

“Our copies look better than the originals,” Pessy said. “We make such high-quality bronzes that people try to sell them as if they were real.”

Designers, he said, come to him with decorative object or lighting ideas they’d like to create for their clients, and Pessy will discuss the practicality of the project and make design suggestions. Because everything in the shop is American-made and a fraction of the cost of antiques, Pessy said he’s become a resource for interior designers and shoppers who need to refurbish, recreate or design pieces of decor.

But at 67, Pessy said he’ll be winding down in a few years.

The Newport Coast resident said he’s been asked to teach at the college level, but he’s thinking of volunteering at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

“I start asking the docents so many questions about the sculptures,” he said with a laugh. “And they say to me, ‘Do you know how to make a bronze?’ If only they knew.”