Walkabout: Shine a Light, Part 4

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, and Part 6 of this story.

Walk into a room, flick a switch and the lights come on. What a wonderful innovation that we take for granted.

When electricity first developed, it certainly was not taken for granted. It was a marvel of technology, one so fascinating and fearful that the world of electricity got its own pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Exposition.

Visitors saw the wonders of Nicola Tesla’s alternating current and marveled at his corporate sponsor, Westinghouse, as they contract the lights for the entire fair.

Thomas Edison and General Electric had lost the bid to light the fair with direct current, but still had exhibits there, as well. Fair goers were introduced to phosphorescent lights, the precursors of fluorescent lighting, as well as neon lights.

The White City was lit by electric lights, so much so that it glowed. It was an exceedingly bright and exciting world, and the Fair showed that electricity was not something to be feared, but rather a force to be harnessed to our will, controllable from its mighty generators down to the lighting of our lamps.

And what lamps those were. The versatility of electric lighting seemed to literally light up the imaginations of designers everywhere.

No longer limited by gravity, or a messy delivery system, designers were able to unfetter their imaginations and use nature, geometric shapes, as well as familiar designs of the past, and make those elements bring light into homes, commercial establishments, civic buildings, factories and streets.

Just as the first gas fixtures were called gasoliers, the first electric fixtures were called electroliers. They used many of the same shapes as the gas fixtures, and many early fixtures combined both gas and electricity.

As was also mentioned last time, the early electric fixtures celebrated the newness and novelty of the incandescent bulb. Well into the 1920’s, it was common to see ceiling, wall and table lights with bare bulbs, usually with those bulbs a major component of the design.

It must be remembered that the early bulbs were not as bright as today’s high wattage bulbs, and anyone using these old fixtures in their homes should get reproduction period bulbs which best imitate the dimmer and less harsh light of the early bulbs.

The improvement of the light bulb and lighting took place at a pivotal moment in Western Art and Culture. The Art Nouveau movement was in full swing, in both Europe and America.

Tangentially, in the USA, the Craftsman/Mission Movement was also gaining strength and popularity at the same time. Art Nouveau celebrated the naturalistic and often sensual forms of nature, and designers immediately captured those forms as lighting.

The electric cord made all kinds of designs possible because the delivery system, in this case the cord, no longer took precedence over the design.

We no longer needed an upright wick, or a length of gas pipe, whether straight or curved. Design was unlimited. One of the first and most important designers to put the full force of his immense imagination to work was, of course, Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Tiffany’s work in stained glass windows is legendary. The idea to use scraps of glass left over from his windows as shades, or part of the body of a lamp, must have come quite naturally, as Tiffany was also a very well-known and imaginative interior decorator at this same time, and knew his lamps would be popular.

We now know that Clara Driscoll, one of his studio designers, actually designed many of his most famous lamps. She is at last getting the recognition she deserves as one of the 20th century’s most influential designers.

Tiffany Studio lamps were manufactured as ceiling fixtures, wall sconces and most famously, as table and floor lamps. There are at least seven categories of styles of lamps, and all of them are extremely well made, and now, extremely valuable collector’s items.

Tiffany lamps celebrate the natural forms of nature, and feature mostly bronze bases, but some Grueby pottery bases, which form stems, trunks and bodies, while the glass shades depict many different species of flowers, insects, and trees.

Some of the designs were geometric, reminiscent of early Frank Lloyd Wright and the Craftsman artisans, while others were more amorphous Art Nouveau designs. All were spectacular, and changed lighting forever.

The popularity of his designs, in his lifetime, was a phenomenon. Other companies rushed to create Tiffany style lamps, in varying degrees of quality, all hoping to sell to the middle class the lamps that only the rich could afford.

Some of these knock-offs are quite good, and today bring a nice price, but they are no Tiffany’s. To this day, any stained glass lamp is called Tiffany, something that would have infuriated Louis Comfort, especially in light of the dubious quality of some of these lamps.

Even the plastic ones are called Tiffany. Today, Dale Tiffany lamps (no relation) are probably the best reproductions out there, and boast of using the same kinds of materials and techniques that the original Tiffany Studios did.

The use of opaque colored glass shades can’t be ignored. So-called slag glass was also very popular. This term refers to a marbleized opaque glass first manufactured in England at the end of the 19th century.

Slag, or the run-offs from ironworks, were added to the molten glass to produce colors and patterns. The chemicals in the slag determined the colors of the glass.

This glass was very popular in hanging ceiling fixture shades, as well as in table lamps, as it could be cut in large pieces. A very popular technique was to use lead came to make designs and patterns in the metal frame of a shade, and have the opaque slag glass behind it.

When the light was turned on, the pattern, a geometric shape, or branches or vines, was pleasingly accented. Today, these lamps, made by American companies such as Miller, Handel, and Steuben, command good prices, especially for the best examples of the art.

And then there are the reverse painted glass shades primarily made by the Handel Company, as well as others. And I haven’t even gotten to the Arts and Crafts/Mission lighting.

The early 20th century was the Golden Age of decorative lighting, and the surface has only been scratched.

Next time more lighting, the kind found in many of our brownstones and other turn of the century homes today. Most of it is not from the 1890’s; it’s from the 1920’s.