G'day all, The other day I mentioned I had 30 or lamps from 16 different manufacturers around my fettling station. I was sitting there today and I wondered how many people could name the 16 manufacturers by looking at a photo of the lamps. It crossed my mind, I should start a contest and the first person that could name all 16 manufacturers can choose one of the lamps as a prize. I'm too scared that there are a number of people that could name all the manufacturers, three in particular. No, one of the three isn't Neil McRae. Neil would most likely be stumped by a couple of lamps outside of his interest in lamps. He probably has the paperwork to get most of them right but it could take a fair bit of looking through before he found them all. Maybe I should do the competition and see which lamp the winner would have picked if I had of offered a prize?
There’s a lot of knowledge on here Matty, sounds like a way to be one lamp less very quickly! I couldn’t compete, I’d be stuck after Tilley,Vapalux,Bialaddin, petromax or clone...
Oh I agree there is a lot of knowledge. That's what scares me. I think there is only one Tilley on the list. Why people may start to struggle is because there are lanterns, table lamps, wall lamps, gravity lamps, overhead tank pendant pressure lamp, hollow wire lamps that range from wall to hanging to lantern. There may even be an Arc lamp, I can't recall. The earliest lamp is from 1898 the latest from the 70's I think. Generally the older lamps are very old the newer ones probably from the 40's. Most of my collection would is pre '30's. Obviously it isn't my collection in the photos, just the next ones in line to be fettled.
@Matty I too would be very nervous. The saying “You’re a better man than I, Gungadin” comes to mind. Cheers mate Pete
Hahaha, yes indeed. I think things that would make it difficult for any one person to know all of the manufacturers is the variety of type and the way the lamps are on shelves or the bench top or hanging. Some, you can't get a perfectly clear look at. Few people are into hollow wire, fewer into gravity lamps. That is why I say Neil may struggle even if only a little bit because hollow wire and gravity lamps are outside of his collecting interest. I would bet it all that he would have no trouble with the table lamps and lanterns. There are three collectors that I know have at least an interest in all of the classes of lamps. @Anthony @Carlsson @Conny C I think Anthony would do very well with the hollow wire and gravity stuff. He may struggle with the table lamps and lanterns but using Neil's PLC he could overcome those barriers. Christer seems to have ceased collecting persay and he may have forgotten a bit of what he once knew. He certainly has the ability to find out what a lamp is even if at first, he doesn't recognise it. Conny is perhaps the one to fear the most. We have parallel collecting desires in the classes of hollow wire, gravity and early American table lamps. Conny may struggle with some of the lanterns because I don't believe he is into lanterns that much. None of the lanterns are all that difficult to recognise, if you can see them clearly. Conny has the ability to find out what he is looking at even if he hasn't seen a particular lantern before. There will be many others that I can't think of that have or have had an interest in hollow wire and gravity lamps and therefore could recognise most of what they see. Perhaps @Henry Plews @Michel I'm just struggling to think of others that have shown an interest in all forms of the lighting they would see. I will have left out people that well deserved to be mentioned. I can't even remember my own name most days.
@Matty Go on, do it! Minus the prize of course. Personally I’d be quite happy to identify more than one. Regards Jeremy
Before I place a photo of the entire lot, I'll post one of the lamps waiting in line. Well, I have two of them, which will enable me to have one complete one with a good amount of spares left over. The image members would have seen in the group photo is the white body and valve. here, I am showing some of the burner and a lot more of the lamp than would have been seen. This lamp has the biggest baddest burner I have seen on a hollow wire lamp. I do think and hope there is a chance someone will know whom manufactured the lamp - I don't.
Whoever manufactured that surely took inspiration from Graetzin or Hasag! I think you should go ahead with the competition Matty but refrain from adding a prize.
I'll pull it apart tomorrow and show the burner. Someone may have seen one before. I bought the lamps from America. That doesn't mean they originated in America. These burners were designed to produce and burn a lot of gas, they mean business
Interesting quiz Matt ! That burners cap seems familiar, seen on some American lamps. Burner very intriguing and would be nice seeing tomorrow. /Conny
Hmm, mate, good one, it can't hurt to look. I can't photograph it until my daughter gets home with her camera. I did weigh it and it is 490 grams without the valve and the stem 570 with the valve & stem. The packing is in the stem. I weighed a Coleman and it was 250 grams with the valve wheel. This burner was designed to put out serious light. The fuel enters what I think is the generator. The gas then flows upwards, across and downwards to a air/gas mixer - think Gloria, Best etc, the one where the gas jumps the gap & mixes with air then back into the burner to be delivered to the burner cap. I have some designs / patents that the inventor philosophises how much better the burners would work if the fuel was heated prior to entering the generator - as hot as it can be before entering the generator, then heating the gas before it enters the burner cap. This burner has the definite idea to keep the gas as hot as it can be before it enters the burner cap. I might even be able to get two of these going. I'm pretty lucky where one of the cowlings is in very good condition, the other is excellent. The inner hole opening on a Veritas 350CP is about 11mm. This one is 16mm. I know that doesn't sound much but the opening looks twice as big as the Veritas. I supopose one way to visualise it is to get an 11mm and a 15mm socket as sit them side by side or ring spanners. An Aladdin 1A jet, is a fairly large jet. It takes a 9mm spanner. The jet on this thing is a monster taking an 11mm spanner. Again, it doesn't sound much but the jet looks twice the size of an Aladdin 1A.
@Anthony Part of thee problem we face 100 years after the fact is we see nice illustrations of the lamps but often, we don't get to see the burners. When I first looked at the burner, I thought it must be a gas machine / central generator lamp. I had to keep reminding myself that the stem has packing in it an a hollow wire fitting on it. One bloke I forgot and i have no excuse why, is @Mackburner . If anyone is going to know the burner it is he. Do you mean the two photos you posted?
Ok, I have finally got some photos. A friend of mine Marko rang and said he thought the the brass trim at the fitter end may have been upside down. Both lamps had the trim installed the same way and whilst that doesn't mean it is correct, I feel when I turn it around it doesn't look right. I'd be happy to go with the consensus though. The last lamp @Anthony showed, it has the brass trimming the way Marko thinks it should go. The burner weighs twice what the Coleman does. The burner is very well engineered. Here you can see the burner cap side by side the much smaller Veritas 350CP burner cap. I mean fair dinkum, have a look at the size of the jet compared to an Aladdin 1A jet, which in itself is larger than most jets. I have seen jets this large before and that is on overhead generators on upright mantle lamps. The pricker is a well machined piece of kit. The packing and a neat little hooking system to retrieve the packing is housed in the stem rather than be in the generator. Others did that, Doud Light Co comes to mind. I'll post some more photos tomorrow after pulling a burner apart.
Well maybe I should know the burner but I don't. The lamp does look a bit like a Helios which would make it Standard or Nulite but the burner certainly ain't a Helios. The whole thing looks well made and will probably do some serious light. ::Neil::
If I get time today, I will see how I go lighting the lamp. I'll leave the cowling off. I agree, I think this burner was designed to put out massive light but I suspect it will also produce massive heat. The heat might be welcome. We have had days of around 28C for a couple of weeks but a cold snap on Saturday is meant to bring about a 9C day. If that happens, I'll be hibernating.
Matt, you got it pretty right there I have not stopped collecting per say, but I absolutely don't give up on a fair deal if I stumble up on one. The odd lamps are still finding their ways to my island, but not as frequent as they did some fifteen or twenty years ago. Collecting to me is not about the amount, but about the varieties, and especially the way different brands has chosen to solve different problems to get what we want e.g. burner wise (hence my total lack of understanding why anyone would specialise on one single brand. Especially brands that always use the same kind of burner for all their lamps, like e.g. Tilley, just to mention one. That's just boring to me.) So I'm definitely interested in what you might bring up in your contest, but I don't know much of the lamps produced down under, or - just to mention another of my vast "in-knowledgeable" lamp countries; France. Or all the kinds America spat out in the early twentieth century... Oh, well. I will do as anyone else in here will do after seeing your pics; First I will spot the possible direct hit(s), then I'll check the catalogues section here at CPL, then the reference gallery with all the different lamps posted there, and after that I will go through Neil's PLC. That's how we all do, perhaps just in another order, and nothing wrong with that! It's called research. Works well here too! And it will be a great deal of fun!
I agree, using your researching skills and tools is a perfectly acceptable way of of trying to figure out what the lamps may be. If you can know the name of a lamp that you didn't know prior to the competition, even if you don't end up getting them all right, you have gained something from the experience. Even though @Mackburner isn't interested in gravity or hollow wire lamps, I suspect he has had a lot of visuals on those type of lamps because he has had thousands of requests to help identify a lamp. So even though Neil isn't interested in them, other peoples interest in them introduce Neil to lamps he otherwise wouldn't give a 2nd glance to. Of course Neil has it over the vast majority of us because of his research skills and his huge reference library. Someone I just thought of as I typed is @JEFF JOHNSON Even if Jeff isn't interested in certain areas say Gravity Lamps, (he maybe interested I'm just using it as an example) Jeff enjoys the paperwork side of collecting so he may have either seen the lamps in catalogues or other paperwork or has the ability to find the lamps in catalogues and or other paperwork. Sadly, I don't have many things from France. I have a couple of Marvel but they aren't at my fettling station. I'd like more European table lamps and hollow wire but collecting from Australia, that isn't easy and never will be easy to do. If I had a large budget, I could probably ask people like you, Conny and Michel to keep an eye out for lamps that come up that I can buy. That is never going to happen so I resign myself to enjoying lamps as shown by other collectors. I know you have hollow wire lamps but I wasn't sure if you had added them to your collection to use your own words I know the quality of your collection and the variety in it. That is why I think you would do well in such a competition because of your interest in American lamps as well as European and the different variety from those places such as lanterns, table lamps, hollow wire and gravity lamps. Because of your previous collecting diversity, you have the advantage by far over someone that collects Tilley alone. I actually don't think many people realise just how good your collection is and that is a shame. You should show some from time to time. I know you have some in the gallery but they tend to get pushed back because of your early involvement with the forum. We have to be careful and not have people think that we think they are wrong for collecting only one or two manufacturers lamps and then only say 200A within that manufacturers inventory. You and I both know it is perfectly fine for a collector to collect how they see fit. However, we both have the same ideas that variety makes our collections more interesting to ourselves. I think the Tilley example you use is perfect. To me, if you own one Tilley, or 100 Tilleys they are essentially the same lamp with just a different body. For that reason, I find Tilley and Kayen lamps quite boring. I don't consider someone that collects the very many models of Tilley to be inferior, it is just something I wouldn't do. I mentioned elsewhere recently that at last count I had around 70 different manufacturers lamps in my collection and that figure has likely grown. If you consider my collection with the many hollow wire and gravity lamps, the vast majority of collectors wouldn't be interested in them. A well stocked Tilley collection would be far more valuable than my collection. I guess that is one of the oddities in collecting. I have many examples of lamps where there are only one or two or a handful known to have survived yet a Pork Pie is worth more than them. I do find that strange. I think the value of American table lamps is starting to increase because there are quite a few collectors that are now beginning to add them to their collection. When I add a lamp to my collection, it is generally because I haven't already got an example and often, the rarely known ones can slip under the radar - thank goodness.
@Anthony I just went trough 6 or 7 Best catalogues but couldn't see anything. I can't locate either the Standard Booklet nor the Red Best catalogue. On the flipside, I have re-acquainted myself with paper work I have forgotten I had or can't remember ever owning it. You will be pleased to know, I found my Tilley book that you generously donated to me.
Hahahaha, you honestly felt you needed to ask if i knew where my glasses were? I don't. Boy, oh, boy, oh boy, I saw Acorn but read Best. Thanks will look now but I am also in a race against the clock to polish a Coleman hood.
@Pchamp Paul is certainly a collector with diversity in his collection and collects nearly any style of lamp that was ever manufactured. Paul is also a keen lamp history buff so even if he doesn't have one of these burners, he may have seen it. I think by @Anthony prodding, he probably has seen the lamp in a catalogue and is nudging me towards it. Anthony, please shoot me a copy of the Best catalogue. Most of my catalogues are locked up in a failed hard drive. Paul, if Anthony doesn't have this catalogue on file only hard copy, perhaps you wouldn't mind shooting me a copy.
@Anthony thanks for the catalogue. I can't say I see anything in the catalogue that can be said is this lamp. I know you weren't saying it was. One thing I just noticed and it was really refreshing to see is "Manufactured under license from the Patentee" I wish they all had of done that I can assure you, you'd see that sort of thing against Colemans early Lamps - a lot.
