Electric Brass Hurricane Lamp in Oil-Lamp Form, c. 1985–2005

The Piece

A brass lamp built in the shape of a Victorian kerosene lamp, wired for electricity and fitted with a clear glass chimney.

The form follows the original closely. A rounded brass font swells out above a ribbed shoulder and narrows into a waisted stem, which drops onto a domed and stepped foot with two turned rings.

Above the font sits the collar, and it is the best-made part of the lamp: a double band of pierced brass, the lower course cut in narrow slots and the upper in tall openings between a row of applied discs, with milled beading top and bottom. A knurled thumbwheel projects from the side on a short stem, in the position an oil lamp’s wick-raiser would occupy.

The chimney is clear glass, waisted above the collar and flaring open at the top like a tulip.

The brass is warm and bright over most of its surface, with darker spotting through the lacquer across the font and the foot.

Underneath, the base is spun metal with a recessed centre, and it carries three labels.

History & Provenance

The honest identification first, because with a lamp shaped like this it is the only question that matters: this is a reproduction made as an electric lamp. It is not an antique oil lamp that somebody later converted, and it is not represented as one.

Four separate things on the object say so, and they agree.

The underside of the base carries its factory Underwriters Laboratories listing label — UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES, PORTABLE LAMP, ISSUE NO. J-2540 — with a second sticker reading E-71054. A lamp listed by UL as a portable lamp was submitted, tested and labelled as an electric appliance by its manufacturer. A converted oil lamp does not acquire one.

Beside it is the manufacturer’s printed instruction sheet, headed IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS, and its subject is the plug: this portable lamp is equipped with a polarized attachment plug, a plug having one blade wider than the other, and it warns against defeating that feature. That sheet was pasted on at the factory, to a new product, as part of the instructions that accompany it.

The plug itself matches. It is a moulded brown Leviton attachment plug with one blade visibly wider than the other — polarized, and the modern standard. American lamps ran on unpolarized plugs, both blades alike, for most of the twentieth century; polarized plugs replaced them through the later part of it. A lamp that carries a polarized plug and the printed explanation of what a polarized plug is was built after that changeover, not before it.

And the base agrees with the paperwork. It is light spun metal with an open recessed underside, not the heavy weighted foot of a kerosene lamp, which had to resist a tall glass chimney and a reservoir of fuel.

On that evidence it is offered as c. 1985–2005: a reproduction hurricane lamp in the Victorian oil-lamp taste, made and sold as an electric lamp.

What it reproduces is worth knowing, because the form is not arbitrary. The kerosene lamp of the later nineteenth century had a font to hold fuel, a burner collar with a wick-raiser at its side, a perforated gallery to feed air to the flame, and a glass chimney to draw that air upward and keep the flame steady and smokeless. Every one of those elements survives here as shape rather than function — the pierced gallery, the thumbwheel where the wick key went, the chimney — which is why the lamp reads correctly even though nothing burns.

There is lettering stamped on the inner sleeve of the collar, showing through the air slots, but only fragments of it can be read at this angle and it is not legible enough to name a maker. The lamp is offered unattributed.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This one earns its place on what it does at night, and it is worth being clear about why it is priced where it is: it is a reproduction, so you get the silhouette of a nineteenth-century lamp without the price, the fragility or the fuel.

The light is the point. A bare bulb inside a clear glass chimney throws light in every direction and upward, which is the opposite of a shaded lamp. In a dim room it reads as a flame rather than a fixture, and the pierced collar underneath breaks the lower light into a ring of small bright slots.

Put a warm low-wattage bulb in it — better still, a filament-style LED — and the illusion closes completely. The chimney was designed to be looked through at a flame, and it does the same work for a glowing filament.

Brass and clear glass are as neutral as materials get. It sits with wood, leather, pewter, stoneware and painted furniture, and it belongs in the rooms where people actually want this look: a cabin, a study, a farmhouse kitchen counter, a guest room nightstand, a bookshelf, a shop counter.

It is also an easy object to own. Nothing to fill, no wick to trim, no soot on the chimney and no open flame in a house with a dog or a child in it. That is the whole argument for the electric version and it is a good one.

And the brass is ready to go either way. Left as it is, the spotting and bloom read as age and the lamp looks lived-with. Polished back, it will come up bright and hard and look like new brass. Both are legitimate; the choice is yours, and it is reversible in only one direction.

A note on care. Do not put a high-wattage bulb in it. The chimney is a closed glass tube around the bulb and it traps heat far more than an open shade; 40 watts or an LED equivalent is plenty and is kinder to the glass.

Lift the chimney out to clean it and wash it separately in warm soapy water. Do not clean it in place — the collar will not thank you for the leverage, and a wet chimney set back onto a warm lamp can crack.

If you polish the brass, take the chimney off first and keep polish away from the pierced collar, where it packs into the slots and dries white.

And once you polish it, it is polished for good. The lacquer comes off with the tarnish, and bare brass will need doing again every few months from then on.