Mac is Back in Town

Mclean Lighting Works Returns to the High Point Market

Interior Featuring McLean Lighting Works

For antique lighting cognoscente, designers in the know, and all those who appreciate quality lighting products produced in the U.S., there is reason to rejoice. After a long hiatus, McLean Lighting Works is returning to the High Point Market. You heard it here first: Mac Moore and company are back in town!

Actually, Moore was really never too far away. McLean Lighting Works, manufacturers of fine interior and exterior antique reproductions and custom lighting, is after all, based just down the road in Greensboro, N.C. But it’s been some years since the firm exhibited its antique reproduction lighting--ranging from exterior and interior hanging and wall-mount fixtures to chandeliers, sconces and lamps recreated in brass, copper and tin with hand-rubbed patina finishes--in Market Square, and later in the IHFC.

Tools of the trade.

“The Internet changed the world, and it eventually changed the way we operated at McLean Lighting Works,” Moore says. “But by relying solely on the Internet, over time we lost one of the things that I like most about this business, and that is the face-to-face contact with customers. Regardless of how good your website is, you can’t replace that.”

Mac Moore

 At the same time, Moore was ready to launch another facet of McLean Works: antique lighting. “We have loved and collected antiques for years and when we saw the new Antique & Design Center at Market Square, we knew we’d found the perfect venue to bring them to Market,” Moore relates. “We’re very excited about connecting personally with buyers and designers again and to being a viable source for antique lighting.”

Buyers and designers on the hunt this season will note a great number of vintage lights on display in the McLean Lighting Works space, some from now defunct (and coveted) Virginia Metalcrafters. There will also be antique street lights in the space from England and France, as well as a street light from Boston signed by its maker with most of the original glass intact. Oh, and coach lights, lots of coach lights, all restored by hand in the McLean Lighting Works workshop, by people dedicated to their craft, using the same methods and techniques that were used to create the pieces originally.

“We operate a hands-on business,” Moore says. “The people that we employ are very smart and highly educated and like to work with their hands. It’s somewhere between craft and manufacturing. We don’t mass-produce anything, but we make a lot of things.”

Indeed, McLean Lighting Works is responsible for restoring or duplicating many period lights throughout the State, including a large, three-tier chandelier in the library of Bennett College and the chapel lanterns of Wesley Memorial Church here in High Point.  The firm was also the primary supplier of all the authentic lighting used in the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson.

If Americana is beginning to sound like a theme here, it’s because McLean Lighting Works was originally launched as a supplier to The Saltbox, a retail establishment operated by Moore’s wife, Nancy, in the State Street Station area of Greensboro that specializes in American-made folk art, pottery and paintings, as well as one-of-a-kind handcrafted art and antiques.

“We’ve always collected American,” Moore says, adding that in addition to antique lighting, there will be a goodly selection of American antique and vintage furnishings for buyers to peruse in the space this Market. Welcome back Mac!

Honey guards the shop.

Written by Kimberley Wray. 1st 2 photos courtesy of McLean Lighting other Photography by Amanda Lane Kinney.