Antique Art Nouveau Panel Slag Glass Lamp Best Original Paint Cast Iron Base B&H

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Antique Art Nouveau Panel Slag Glass Lamp Best Original Paint Cast Iron Base B&H:
$250.00

Antique Art Nouveau Panel Slag Glass Lamp Best Original Paint Cast Iron Base Bradley & Hubbard, Edward Miller Type & Era. Measures 22 1/2\" tall in total, the bottom is 8 1/2\" wide and is cast iron not spelter. The shade has 6 original caramel slag glass panels and measures 8\" high and 15 3/4\" across. I could not find a maker marking but it has better than average quality. The best atriabute in my opinion is the great paint - green base paint with beautiful painted flowers trim to the metal filagree shade. It is a single bulb socket with old pull chain with ball pull end that is original. The wiring is old vintage if not original and the plug and light work fine. I could not find any cracks or damage, I would call it excellent condition but please use my 12 photos for a good appraisal. Guaranteed a genuine early 20th century panel lamp likely Bradley & Hubbard.

Around the turn of the century leaded stained glass lamps like those made by Louis Comfort Tiffany were popular, but expensive to make thus costly to purchase. Prices for Tiffany table lamps ran into the hundreds of dollars. Slag glass panel lamps, as they’re called today, with a few large pieces of glass fitted into a cast metal frame evolved as a way to create some of the effects of the leaded lamps without the high cost of labor and materials. That made them affordable for many more people. A 1925 Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog shows “metal table lamps” fitted with “art glass” at prices ranging from $6.90 to $19.

Lamp makers

Many manufacturers made this type of lamp. Often the lamps were not signed, but if they are marked, the maker’s name or mark is usually found cast into the metal on the underside of the base. Sometimes a mark is present on the metal edge of a shade or elsewhere on the base. Occasionally a surviving paper label is present. Miller and Bradley & Hubbard are two of the best known makers, in part because their marks are frequently seen.

Miller was established in 1844 in Meriden, Conn., as Joel Miller and Son. The company got its start in lighting manufacture by producing metal candleholders, and then moved into kerosene lamps, gas lighting, and electric lighting as times changed. The name of the company changed too, becoming Edward Miller & Co. for a time, then The Miller Co. A mark of Miller or E M & CO on the base indicates a Miller lamp.

Miller produced more expensive leaded glass lamps, but seized the opportunity to sell lighting for the middle classes as more and more homes were wired for electricity. The company sold lamps in bulk to utility companies in large cities who retailed them to their customers. A 1920 Philadelphia Electric Co. catalog shows lamps with prices from $12.50 to $60, depending on size. All the lamps are described as being “cast metal openwork” over “light amber art glass” and could be ordered in a variety of metal finishes including French brown, Grecian antique, Etruscan bronze and Florentine relief.

While lamps were made with glass in colors other than amber, or caramel as it is often called now, amber predominates. According to a lighting catalog from the period, “Amber is the color used in all [our] lamps. Amber has, by scientific tests been proven to be easiest on the eyes, and most restful when reading.”

Also located in Meriden, Conn., the Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Co. produced many slag glass lamps. Like Miller, this maker was already well-established in the lighting arena as a manufacturer of kerosene lamps when electricity came along. The company had its beginnings in the 1850s as a clock manufacturer. Bradley & Hubbard also made other metal goods like bookends, inkwells and spittoons. Marked slag glass lamps typically have a “genie” style oil lamp surrounded by a triangle and the words Bradley & Hubbard Mfg. Co. found somewhere on the base and the company name in uppercase text on the inner rim of a shade.

Other period manufacturers of slag glass lamps include the Empire Lamp Mfg. Co. in Chicago, Pittsburgh Lamp, Brass, and Glass Co. in Pittsburgh, and H. E. Rainaud Co., in Meriden, Conn.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 gave birth to the Great Depression and people became more concerned with economic survival than buying pretty things. The market for dramatic, heavy lamps with glass shades faded and manufacturers responded with cheaper, lightweight lamps with paper or fabric shades. Slag glass lamps remain the embodiment of a time when the country was surging forward with a lightness of spirit and the bright promises of electricity for all.