Any idea what this rather odd light fixture might have been for? I believe it is a converted gas lamp. But it looks too crude to be residential.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. This is a very odd looking fixture. Could it be a standard two-arm gas fixture to which someone later added a Mission style shade? I’d have to see the inside.

  2. Hmmm. Live and learn. I’ve never heard of the two in combination before, but as this excerpt from Rejuvenation Hardware indicates, not that uncommon.

    “In the early 1900s, gas and electric interests fought tooth and nail for the lighting market.

    As gas was cheap but imperfect, and electricity clean but sometimes unreliable, many folks hedged their bets with Gas/Electric lighting like the Mock’s Crest and Astoria – newfangled “combination” fixtures which used both technologies.

    Instead of being caught in the middle, the fixture-buying public won out with a creative marriage of old and new technology, proving that you can have it both ways.”

  3. I think it’s a combination gas/electric fixture. The two outside fixtures look like”gas candles”. It also might be all gas; on the bottom-right of the photograph there’s something that might be a gas pipe bending upwards toward the inside of the slag glass shade. The opening in the center of that shade might be sufficient to vent the heat from a gas jet.