Bryn Mawr has a new lantern maker, just in time for Lantern Night, which takes place this Sunday, Oct. 24.
For many Mawrters, Lantern Night stands out among their first-semester memories for the sense of belonging it instills early in their Bryn Mawr experience. At the ceremony, typically held on an evening in late October, first-year students gather and sophomores present to them lanterns in their class color, symbolically passing on the light of knowledge from one class to the other.
For decades, the lanterns that first-year students received at Lantern Night—and treasured for years to come—were produced in rural Pennsylvania by metal fabricator Kurt Schenk and family. Recently, Schenk stepped down from the annual lantern production, and the hunt was on for a new manufacturer.
Nova Industrial Arts, an architectural metal and sign company in Mount Holly, N.J., stepped up to the challenge, just in time for this year’s Lantern Night. We sat down with Nova’s chief operating officer Corey Kennedy to talk about his new assignment.
What kind of work does your company typically do?
A typical job for us would be something like the Jefferson Tower skyline signage, with 22-foot-high logos and 14-foot-high letters that are 500 feet up in the air. A lot of our work involves not only our signage expertise, but our architectural metal expertise.
That's really where the mesh point was for this. This is a production item, which is different than a lot of what we do—we typically do ones or twos of an item—and it's a small-scale thing. But we have the equipment—lasers, routers, bending equipment, welding equipment—and we have the manpower. So yeah, it doesn't fit exactly what we do, but if we can do it here locally, I think it's a great opportunity for our community and for the Bryn Mawr community.
What were some of the challenges?
The owl itself used to be separate from the entire frame. The glass rattled around in there a little bit, so it was tough to maintain durability. So, we incorporated the owl into the entire flat structure of the lantern. That was one of the tricky parts that needed improvement.
Another challenge was the way the candle is inserted into the bottom of the lantern. Traditionally it has been a little tricky to get it in there—putting a lit candle into the bottom of the lantern is a tough task. So, we made some improvements there, too.
And it came together?
It did. We really have some fine craftsmen in our shop. I owe it to the tradesmen and women in our shop to be able to accomplish this stuff. I just handed it over to them and said, "This is what we're making. Let's replicate this," and let them get to work and got out of their way.