Antique Brass Oil Lamp Converted to Electric Table Lamp, c. 1880–1920
Viridian Eclection
The Piece A tall brass oil lamp, built as a neoclassical urn and since wired for electricity. The font rises from a gadrooned lower bowl over a knopped stem and a stepped circular foot, swells thro...
The Piece
A tall brass oil lamp, built as a neoclassical urn and since wired for electricity. The font rises from a gadrooned lower bowl over a knopped stem and a stepped circular foot, swells through a plain cylinder to a bold shouldered top, and carries a pair of loose rings hung from cast bosses at the shoulder. Directly beneath the socket sits the pierced gallery, a band of narrow vertical slots that drew air to the burner when the lamp still burned fuel. It is the detail that gives the object away, and the reason the proportions read correctly rather than as decoration borrowed from a lamp.
The surface has been left alone and it is the best thing here. Verdigris has gathered in the flutes, the mouldings and the hollows of the foot in a deep blue green, while the raised runs have worn back to warm brown and flashes of raw brass where hands and cloths have passed over them for a century. It is differential and unrepeatable, the kind of patina that only time lays down, and polishing it would destroy most of the value.
History & Provenance
Kerosene made domestic lighting cheap from the 1860s, and the brass lamp makers answered with bodies in the classical vocabulary: urns, balusters, columns and pedestals, spun in sections and screwed together so a font could be lifted off its stem for filling and cleaning. This one is built exactly that way, with visible joints between the sections and applied bosses carrying the rings, which is factory work of the later nineteenth century rather than hand raising.
The electrification came afterward and is not original. A threaded nipple carries a brass keyed socket where the burner used to thread in, and the cord and plug are modern replacements, which is the usual and sensible history for a lamp of this kind: they were converted rather than discarded as houses were wired, and the ones that survived did so because somebody kept using them.
No maker's mark is present on any surface, and none should be expected. The trade marked burners far more often than it marked bodies, and the burner is long gone. The base retains its original felt, aged through and torn, with old ink staining bled into the pile.
Product Details
| Era | c. 1880–1920 for the lamp itself, later for the electrical conversion. The pierced burner gallery and the sectional font screwed to its stem establish that the body was built to burn fuel rather than made in fuel lamp form for electricity; spun and machine turned construction with applied cast bosses places it in factory production of the later nineteenth century; and domestic manufacture of this class ended as houses were wired through the first decades of the twentieth |
| Material | Brass, with a natural verdigris and oxide patina |
| Form | Neoclassical urn font with gadrooned bowl, knopped stem, stepped circular foot, twin loose ring handles on cast bosses, pierced burner gallery |
| Electrical | Brass keyed socket, rewired with a replacement cord and moulded plug. Not original to the lamp |
| Shade | Pagoda form silk shade with a ring finial, included |
| Marks | None found. The original burner, which would have carried a maker's name, is absent |
| Dimensions | Approximately 33 in. high overall with the shade, shade approximately 18 in. across, foot approximately 7 in. in diameter |
| Condition | Good. Structurally sound and standing true. Deep original patina throughout with verdigris in the recesses, left entirely as found and not cleaned. Original base felt aged, torn and ink stained. Rewired at some point and fitted with a modern plug; it has not been tested under power and is offered as found. Shade serviceable with light age toning. |
Why It Belongs in Your Home
Scale is what this does. At around a yard tall with the shade it anchors a console, a sideboard or the far end of a long room in a way that a small lamp never will, and the verdigris means it sits comfortably against old wood, plaster, stone and leather without needing anything else in the room to agree with it. Keep the shade for a working lamp, or pull it and let the brass stand as a column of worn colour. Either way it does not look decorated, it looks kept.
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