Rehabbing a MCM light fixture

I rehabbed a birdcage light fixture this past week which I had bought this past summer at a garage sale. I was immediately drawn to the black metal and walnut veneer slats, the simple shapes of the white globe contrasting with the unadorned straight lines of the rest of the piece. Without any manufacturing marks at all, I'm guessing just by look that this is probably from the end of what we'd normally call MCM and into the "Mod" period: the latter half of the 1960s or maybe the 1970s. The wires are just spot welded to the metal rings, and the slats bolt to the rings with simple knurled thumbscrews and nuts. I'm sure this was never considered high design or made by a premier manufacturer. Let's call it a good example of "Midcentury Modest" which someone might buy at a department store or catalog. 

I was thinking I'd hang it over my kitchen sink when I bought it, but it didn't fit: the fixture is too wide to hang free from the electrical box in the ceiling, which is too close to the exterior wall. So I hung it from a nail in the garage and thought about it.

My house is old, and the windows are small. Not a lot of natural light enters most rooms, thanks to the shade of the large trees and the large eaves on the house. My bedroom sitting area has a tiny Ikea ceiling fixture, which doesn't put out a lot of light, especially when I'm trying to cue up a record and want to examine the surface. So I thought I'd hang this fixture near the turntable. Well, the slope of the roof/ceiling there didn't give me a good spot for it, so I wound up moving a lamp for the time being next to the turntable, and decided I'd hang this pendant near the chair. 

First thing to do was to clean it up. It was dusty when I bought it, and it surely didn't get any cleaner  while in the garage.

Here it is with the globe removed (left edge of photo).

Disassembled.

Wooden slats removed and ready for sanding.

The inside faces of the slats

I sanded them with 400 grit paper, then oiled them with Watco Danish Oil. The three on the left in this photo haven't been oiled yet, and the ones on the right have been. The wood really sprung back to life.

All the slats, showing the color that emerged when they were oiled.

Reassembled.

Hung over my Lane "First Edition" nightstand, which I uses as a little side table in my sitting area. The mirror is one of two that came with the set that I bought. That's the subject of another post.