{"product_id":"chartreuse-ginger-jar-ceramic-table-lamp-brass-socket-ul-label-american","title":"Mid-Century Chartreuse Ceramic Ginger Jar Table Lamp, c. 1955–1975","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Piece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eA small ceramic table lamp in a hard, bright chartreuse green — the kind of colour that decides a room the moment it is switched on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe body is a ginger-jar baluster: a swelling shoulder narrowing to a waisted neck, then falling away to a wide stepped foot with two turned rings above the base. Above the shoulder sits a moulded collar, and above that a second smaller ring, both in the same glaze, so the ceramic carries right up to the socket rather than stopping at a metal fitting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe glaze is thick and high-gloss, pooling slightly darker in the hollows of the turnings and pulling thinner and more yellow over the high points of the foot. Fine dark specks are scattered through it where iron in the body has come through the glaze in firing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe hardware is brass-finished: a socket shell with a black phenolic turn-knob at the side, seated on a short brass neck and a pair of stepped collars, with a brass shade ring above.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe cord is brown twisted lampcord, exiting through a hole set into the back of the foot, and finishing in a moulded brown two-blade plug stamped A.I.W.C° on one blade.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eWrapped around the socket shell is the original paper label: E-23…02, Underwriters’ Laboratories, Inc., LISTED, PORTABLE LAMP, C-8506.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe shade is a plain coolie shade in cream paper with a bound edge, on a wire spider.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eHistory \u0026amp; Provenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eTwo questions matter on a ceramic lamp, and this one answers both from the object.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe first is whether it was made as a lamp or made as a vase and drilled later. A converted vase has a hole cut through fired, glazed ceramic, and the cut edge is raw and sharp-grained. This one is not that. Look into the hole at the foot: the green glaze runs right over the rim and turns down into the opening, with a smooth rounded lip. Glaze over the edge means the hole was there before the glaze went on and before the piece was fired. It left the pottery as a lamp body.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe underside says the same. The foot ring is unglazed bisque, as a foot ring should be, and the recessed centre inside it is finished in a plain cream glaze — a different glaze from the green outside, applied deliberately to the part nobody sees. That is factory work, not a conversion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe second question is the date, and here the wiring carries it rather than the ceramic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe plug is not polarized. Both blades are the same width, each pierced with a hole, moulded into a brown thermoplastic body. American lamps moved to polarized plugs — one blade wider than the other — through the later twentieth century, and a lamp still wearing an unpolarized moulded plug was wired before that change. The moulded plug itself sets the other end of the range: it replaced the screw-together plug of earlier decades.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe paper label on the socket supports it. Underwriters’ Laboratories in blackletter, LISTED, and PORTABLE LAMP, which is UL’s own category name for a table or floor lamp. This is the factory label, not a later addition, and it is still legible after sixty-odd years on a hot socket shell.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eNothing on the piece names a maker. The base carries no stamp, no impressed mark and no paper label, only the residue of a felt pad that has come away. That is ordinary for the American lamp trade, where potteries supplied bodies to lamp assemblers who wired them and shipped them out under the retailer’s name or none at all. On the evidence of the wiring and the label it is offered as c. 1955–1975, unattributed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eObject\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCeramic table lamp with paper shade\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eForm\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eGinger-jar baluster body with a moulded collar and ring above the shoulder, on a wide stepped and ring-turned foot\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eGlaze\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eHigh-gloss chartreuse green over a white body, thicker and darker in the turnings, with fine iron speckling throughout; cream glaze to the recessed underside\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDimensions\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eApproximately 19 in tall overall with the shade; ceramic body approximately 12 in tall; foot approximately 5½ in across; shade approximately 11 in across the bottom\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eHardware\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBrass-finished socket with a black phenolic side turn-knob, stepped brass collars and a brass shade ring\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eWiring\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBrown twisted lampcord through a glazed hole in the foot, terminating in a moulded unpolarized two-blade plug stamped A.I.W.C°\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eMarks\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eOriginal paper socket label: E-23…02, Underwriters’ Laboratories, Inc., LISTED, PORTABLE LAMP, C-8506. No maker’s mark, stamp or label on the ceramic. Offered unattributed.\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eEra\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ec. 1955–1975, on the wiring and the label. The moulded thermoplastic plug places it after the screw-together plugs of earlier decades, and the plug is unpolarized — both blades the same width — which places it before polarized plugs became standard on American lamps. The UL paper socket label is the factory original and reads PORTABLE LAMP, UL’s category name for a table lamp.\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eShade\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCream paper coolie shade on a wire spider. Clean and undamaged, with none of the yellowing or brittleness a paper shade of the lamp’s own age would carry; a later replacement, included with the lamp.\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCondition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eSound and complete. The ceramic is intact — no chips, no cracks, no crazing and no restoration, the foot ring and both collars whole, and the glaze bright with its gloss unworn. There are two dark irregular residue marks on the neck and shoulder, one below the socket collar and one on the upper body, which sit on the glaze rather than in it. The unglazed foot ring carries adhesive residue and scattered dark specks where a felt pad has come away. The socket turns and the shade ring is present; the paper label is chipped at the top edge but the lettering is legible. The cord and plug are the lamp’s original vintage wiring and are sold as a period component: have the lamp rewired by an electrician before putting it into regular use. Condition Guaranteed.\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eAvailability\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eOne of a Kind — 1 Available\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\n  \u003ch3\u003eWhy It Belongs in Your Home\u003c\/h3\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eBuy this one for the colour. Everything else about it is quietly competent; the glaze is the reason it exists.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eChartreuse is a difficult green to find and an easy one to use. It is warm enough to sit with wood and brass, sharp enough to cut a room of neutrals, and it does something no printed colour does — under a glossy glaze it shifts from yellow-green in daylight to deep olive in lamplight, so the object is not the same at four o’clock as at nine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe form does the work of making that colour respectable. A ginger jar on a stepped foot is a traditional silhouette, so the lamp reads as furniture rather than as a statement, and the strong glaze lands as confidence rather than novelty. That combination is exactly why these were made in such numbers and exactly why the good ones have held their value.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eAt around nineteen inches it is a small lamp, which is the useful size. It fits where a full-height lamp will not: a nightstand, a bookshelf, a hall console, a desk corner, the end of a kitchen counter, a bathroom shelf. Two of them on a pair of tables would do more for a room than one large lamp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eThe glaze is also unusually good at its job. High-gloss ceramic throws light back into the room from the base as well as the shade, so a low-wattage bulb reads brighter than it is — which matters in a corner where you want warmth rather than illumination.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eAnd it is genuinely of its moment without being a costume. The green, the ginger-jar body, the brass socket with its little black knob: an American lamp from the middle of the last century, still wearing its factory label, still turning.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eA note on use, and it is the important one. Have it rewired before you use it regularly. The cord and plug are original, which is good for provenance and not good for a modern outlet; any lamp shop or electrician will fit a new cord and socket in a few minutes for very little money. Keep the old plug in a drawer if you want the evidence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eFit a bulb of 60 watts or less, or an LED equivalent. The ceramic will not mind but the paper shade will, and heat is what yellows and cracks a paper shade.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003eClean the ceramic with a damp cloth and nothing abrasive. The gloss is the whole point and a scouring pad will dull it permanently.\u003c\/p\u003e\n  \u003cp\u003ePut a felt pad under the foot before it goes on a polished surface. The original pad is gone and the unglazed bisque foot ring will mark timber.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viridian Eclection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48061255221353,"sku":"VE-1619","price":375.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/0093\/9369\/files\/991E055C-0913-455B-BB47-9274EC058183.jpg?v=1789458280","url":"https:\/\/viridianeclection.com\/products\/chartreuse-ginger-jar-ceramic-table-lamp-brass-socket-ul-label-american","provider":"Viridian Eclection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}