this is an incredibly cool, finely-crafted, elegant fixture. The picture (both on LU's and Zaneen's sites) doesn't communicate the refinement. It's a glass tube, frosted on the lower-half, with a smaller tube in the top half that folds down into itself, creating a shaft through which the electrical stem extends down into the frosted area. In the pic, it looks like metal on top half - it isn't. All glass, except the electrical, which screws into the glass very discretely and just disappears b/c it's painted white. Since there's NO metal, it is an immensely flexible fixture. My only complaint is the canopy, which is uncharacteristically ordinary. So cool, who cares.