How to date a lamp: from oil lamp to LED

A lamp is dated by its technology as much as by its style. Oil lamps with a round wick and glass chimney belong to the period from the 1780s, paraffin lamps with a thumbwheel to 1860–1920, and electric lamps can be recognised by the lamp holder, flex and switch, which changed over the decades: brass and porcelain, fabric-covered flex, Bakelite, plastic, halogen and finally LED. Because many lamps have been converted and rewired, all the parts must be read together.

Facts

Candles and oil lamps

Before the 1780s, light was a flame from a candle or a simple oil lamp. Candlesticks, chandeliers and wall sconces with mirrors can be recognised by candle sockets with drip pans, hand-cut prisms and mirror glass that has become spotted. Electrified chandeliers from that period have often had the flex run through the frame at a later date.

Aimé Argand’s lamp of 1784 had a round, hollow wick and a glass chimney, so that air flowed both inside and outside the flame. It gave a strong light with almost no smoke and became the model for 19th-century oil lamps, such as the moderator lamp of 1836, in which a spring forced the oil upwards. The reservoir at the side or in the base and the Empire forms in brass and gilt bronze are typical.

Paraffin and gas

Paraffin arrived in the 1850s, and the paraffin lamp became the first lamp that almost everyone could afford. The burner has a flat or round wick that is raised and lowered with a thumbwheel, often with the maker’s name stamped on it, such as Kosmos or Matador. The reservoirs were made of brass, cast iron or pressed glass, and the shades of opal glass.

Gas lighting has pipes instead of flex and a tap for the gas. With the Auer burner and its gas mantle of 1891, the gas flame shone far more brightly. Many paraffin and gas lamps were converted to electricity when the grids arrived; a flex entering an old burner, or an electric holder in an oil reservoir, reveals such a conversion.

The early electric lamp

Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison made the light bulb burn for long periods in 1878–79, and the electricity grids were extended in the cities during the 1880s and 90s. The early bulbs had a carbon filament and a small tip on the glass where the air had been pumped out, and around 1910 tungsten replaced the carbon. The lamp holders were of brass and porcelain, the switch was often in the base and the flex was wound with fabric.

Art Nouveau lamps, such as the leaded-glass shades of Tiffany and the cameo-glass lamps of Gallé and Daum, are often signed in the glass or stamped in the base. The signature tells you who made it, but a lamp from that period should also have fittings and wiring of the time. Read more about how to recognise genuine Tiffany lamps in the guide to the Tiffany lamp.

Bakelite, opal glass and task lamps

In the interwar years, lamp holders, switches and plugs were made of Bakelite, an early plastic that is brown or black and feels hard and slightly heavy. The glass became white opal glass without ornament, and lamps such as Behrens’s arc lamp for AEG and the Bauhaus metal lamps showed that a lamp could be designed for industry. The maker’s mark was often stamped in the shade or on a label in the base, as on the Kaiser Idell.

The task lamp took its form with the Anglepoise of 1932, in which springs hold the arms in balance. After the war plastic flex became common and fabric flex disappeared; a lamp with its original plastic flex is therefore generally later than about 1950. The PH 5 of 1958 and the Arco of 1962 bear their makers’ markings, and copies lack them or have them in the wrong place.

Halogen, CE and LED

In the 1970s and 80s the halogen bulb made small, powerful luminaires possible, often low-voltage with the transformer in the base or in the flex. Such lamps have a rating plate with the maker, model and wattage. The CE mark, which shows that the lamp meets EU requirements, appears on lamps from the 1990s onwards, so a lamp with a CE mark cannot be older than that.

Incandescent bulbs were phased out in the EU from 2009, and today the light source is often an LED module built into the luminaire. A lamp without a replaceable light source was almost always made after 2010. At the same time many classic lamps are still being made, so a new PH lamp and one from the 1960s are told apart by the markings, the flex and the wear rather than by the shape.

Read all the parts together

A lamp consists of parts from different periods: the shade may have been replaced, the flex is new and the holder was changed for safety reasons. Begin, therefore, with what is hardest to change – the base, the stem and the construction itself – and then see whether the holder, switch and flex belong to the same period. New flex does not lower the value of an old lamp, but it does not date it either.

The diagram below shows the parts of the lamp types and how they give light. More lamps, from Roman oil lamps to today’s luminaires, can be found in the lighting category.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A table lamp has a holder and switch of brown Bakelite and fabric-covered flex. When was it probably made?