Starbright Candle Ornament
2025 | Final Fantasy XIV
Furnishing item design for a contest put on by the Final Fantasy XIV developers. Winning designs would be turned into actual furnishing items in the game. Mine ultimately wasn’t selected, but I suppose a menorah was kind of a long shot…
I put a lot of thought into the design and wrote a sort of “artist statement” explaining what went into it, which I am putting below for those who are interested. (It’s written with an audience of non-Jewish folks in mind.)
This candleholder with nine candles is based on a menorah or hanukiah, a traditional candelabra that is used for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Since I don’t celebrate the real-world version of Starlight (Eorzean Christmas), I designed this furnishing with the hope of someday getting to decorate my character’s house for my own winter holiday. I also wanted to make a functional, attractive piece of decorative art that would look nice in any adventurer’s home year-round.
This particular menorah is inspired by the “backwall” style of menorah. In a backwall menorah the candles or oil wells are placed all in a row on a relatively simple base, and behind them there is a diorama or “wall” depicting various Jewish motifs and symbols. Some backwall menorahs include clocks or other features and are meant to hang on a wall, while others are freestanding. They are most commonly made of sterling silver, though some variants made of wood or stone with silver accents can be found online.
I had originally envisioned a simpler menorah design with just a wooden base and tall candles, but I realized I could really make the design stand out by adding a backwall and incorporating existing motifs from the game. I chose the Starbird as the motif because the menorah symbolizes hope and perseverance in times of adversity, and I think the Starbird fits that theme well.
Despite the relatively simple design of the base, I still made sure to adhere to the rules about what makes a Hanukkah menorah different from a regular candleholder. To be able to be used at Hanukkah, a menorah must have nine candles—one for each of the holiday’s eight nights, and a ninth (called the shamesh, or helper candle) used to light the others. Eight of the candles must be on the same vertical level, while the shamesh must be separated from the rest in some way. Many backwall menorahs place the shamesh somewhere in the diorama, but I decided to put it in the middle, as a more familiar menorah arrangement. My aim was to have it still be clearly recognizable as a menorah to those who are familiar with them, but not be so obviously a Jewish ritual object that non-Jewish players might be uncomfortable decorating with it.
To add some color, I decided to craft the backwall ornament from stained glass. Though this isn’t a material that’s commonly used in backwall menorahs, I thought it might be fun to showcase the game’s new material rendering capabilities with translucent glass. Plus I thought the light shining from the menorah’s candles would look lovely through the stained glass, making a piece that looks great from both the front and behind. I was also able to sneakily include the Hanukkah colors (blue, gold, and silver) in the design.
I had initially planned for the base to be made of a dark varnished wood, but I kept thinking about whether the stained glass ornament would be too heavy for a wood base in real life, and ended up changing the base to metal. (I know it’s a videogame and the item wouldn’t have balance issues to begin with, but I wanted it to still be believable.) To make the metal base more visually engaging, I added Elpis flower detailing on the front side.
Outside of Hanukkah, menorahs are often kept as decorative pieces around the home year round. I envisioned that the candles can be lit and unlit by interacting with it, similar to existing lamp items in the game. I had originally planned to include specs for interacting multiple times to light each candle one by one like a real menorah, but that might be outside the scope of what’s feasible ingame, so I compromised by just having all on or all off as options.