Book Review: Oil Lamps

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Oil Lamps

Author: Catherine M.V. Thuro

Date: 1976, 1998

Publisher: Collector Books

ISBN: none

Length: 360 pages

Illustrations: photos by Ken Bell

Quote: “Kerosene lamps...have been and still are a stand-by for electrical power failure. Bless the blackouts! Without them, thousands of early lamps, burners and chimneys would have been destroyed years ago.”

Kerosene, Thuro admits on page one, is “dirty smelly smokey COAL OIL.” Firelight and candlelight seem romantic, but who'd ever want to spend a romantic evening sitting around an oil lamp? In fact the generation that grew up with kerosene lamps tended to form a habit of putting out the light and going to sleep after one hour, because one hour of smelling kerosene was more than plenty. Thuro obviously likes her kerosene lamps, and was delighted to report that in 1976 it was possible to get a new, more “refined petroleum product” that “gives a much cleaner and brighter light than candles.”

Just about anything can be made into an electric lamp but the quirky-looking shapes of kerosene lamps served practical purposes. Oil was stored in a bowl, or “font” or “fount,” below a vertical passage that held a wick upright in a limited amount of air space. The wick was lighted in a small open “burner” space, beneath another piece of glass, typically an inverted bowl or dome or cone, which often featured an upward-pointing stem that served as the chimney. The result was usually a knobbly upright shape that left lots of room for creative shaping. Since it had to be taken apart and cleaned regularly, it was likely to be made in separate pieces, sometimes sold separately for easy replacement since glass often broke.

Lamps also generated a great variety of cute and collectible accessories. Since metal bases might damage a table and kerosene might drip down, a proper Victorian housewife knitted, crocheted, or tatted a doily to set under each lamp. Metal match holders were convenient, one for new and one for used matches if possible. Some lamps were suspended from hooks screwed into shelves or ceilings; some were ensconced on walls. Special gadgets for cleaning chimneys and trimming wicks were patented. Bell-shaped glass hoods were sometimes suspended above a lamp chimney to trap a little more of the soot generated by burning kerosene. Kerosene was brought home and stored in “oil cans,” sometimes just well-covered buckets, sometimes specially designed with pouring spouts that admitted air so the kerosene didn't bubble on the way out, or “whistled” when the contents of the can ran low. Truro has collected samples of each of these, some dated by one specific year.

Her passion, though, is the glass domes and bells, of which she's collected a splendid array of designs. The glass parts of a lamp could be plain and generic, but nineteenth century taste encouraged artistic creativity. If nothing else, the glass manufacturer might dimple the glass with a rod. Usually they seem to have wanted to do much more. Scallops, ribs, curlicues, flower shapes, leaf shapes, diamonds, bows, stars,bars, hearts, shells, human heads (some identified with celebrities although, as Thuro observes, no particular resemblance was necessarily observable), and even landscape pictures could be etched or molded into a glass dome, and were.

Prices fluctuate wildly, and what are usually found in estate sales and spring cleaning sprees are no more valuable than they were when new. Still, even if vintage lamps aren't especially valuable, they can add an important authentic touch to any reproduction of a period look. Kerosene lamps were very much a part of any nineteenth century evening or night scene in North America. Critics jeered when George Selznick allowed lamps made a few years too late to be used in Gone with the Wind. Thuro offers to help anyone producing a drama or reenactment from this period, or seeking the perfect lamp to set on an antique table.

What I had at the time of writing was an imperfect copy of this book, in which an extra copy of one set of pages seems to have displaced other pages. Since this is a picture book whose purpose is to help collectors recognize antiques, however, both the glass collector who bought the book and the antique collector to whom he bequeathed it claimed to find it useful anyway—and the copy I have won't be appearing on a display any time soon, either; it's taken. If you want to collect Oil Lamps, you'll want to own this book about them.

This is a big coffee-table book with glossy paper and lots of pictures, originally sold for a high price, and due to its appeal as an investment guide its price apparently never has come down very far. This makes Oil Lamps a rarity--A Fair Trade Book from which your purchase will actually direct two dollars' worth of encouragement to a living author. When you send this web site $15 per book plus $5 per package plus $1 per online payment, we'll send $2 to Thuro or a charity of her choice.