Glass & Lighting

Oil lamps and their fonts, pressed and blown glass, and the electric lamps that replaced them. Lighting sat close to daily life and shows it. A font with the burner ring worn thin, a shade with a chip where it met the harp every evening for forty years.

Dating glass is mostly a question of how it was made. Mould seams, a pontil mark or the lack of one, the colour of the glass held against a white page. Pressed patterns can be matched to a maker and a run of years through the standard references. Lamps carry maker's marks on the burner and sometimes the base, and post-war lamps often keep their label, which is why the vintage lighting here tends to grade Documented.

We check every lamp for what it is missing. An oil lamp without its burner or a hurricane lamp without its shade is described as such and priced as such. Electric lamps are sold as objects, and the card says what we know about the wiring.

Glass is the most breakable thing we ship. Every piece is double-boxed and packed for the carrier, and it ships anywhere in the United States with the card in the box.