At the turn of the New Year, The International Guild of Lamp Researched, Ltd. (Lamp Guild) revamped their web site. While the site retained it's look and feel, something very special to lighting collectors of all kinds was added; all the issues of Light International were added for download. The information and articles in these previously unavailable issues (other than to the original subscribers) is priceless. What is Light International? I though it best to copy the explanation right from the Guild. Light International link here. "Light International was the brainchild of the late John Claypole in England. He wanted our Guild to have a Journal, so he created one. Over a six year period, John produced 24 issues, printed on his home computer and lovingly assembled by his wife Vonnie on the dining room table. It was mailed to subscribers the world over. The circulation was never great (production time and costs really prohibited more), but the various lampers who contributed articles broke some exciting new ground. The work deserved a much greater circulation than was practical, and ultimately the costs simply out ran the available revenues. In the fall of 2003, John printed the last hardcopy issue. Several us immediately began to scheme as to how we could continue the magazine without the all labor of John and Vonnie, yet with our friend John still functioning as editor. After a couple of false starts, we decided to try doing it on-line, as a part of the Guild site. After two Electronic issues, health issues caused John to retire as Editor. He passed away in March of 2007. In tribute to John and the information he compiled; Neil McRae converted the hardcopies to PDF format. This enables us to provide them here for continued lighting education." Thanks Neil, this is an unbelieveable contribution to the lighting community. Have a look, there is something for everyone in each and every issue. Dan
John Claypole was a great guy and a good friend but also the original grumpy old man, known to a few of us as the Archbishop of NetherlampLand. As such he outranked people like the Monk and myself the Friar and rarely let us forget who was in charge. Those 24 issues were a nightmare to scan because a lot of the images scanned at a poor quality so I had to not only scan but do a fair bit of work on the images to improve the look. We tried hard to persuade John to change the format so that most pages could be printed in greyscale but he always refused because he wanted to be able to colour illustrate on any or every page. That fact alone shoved the printing costs sky high but the result was a truly great magazine which I was proud to have been associated with. The scans have been available to buy on the Guild web site for some years but we never sold many and it is too important to just abandon so they are now available. The download will be slow because the files are big but I think you will find it worth while. ::Neil::
Hmm, who is 'The Monk' and are you 'The Friar' because of where you live..? ...and is Fil Graf, 'The Count'...
I can answer on this one. Neil was of course the Clean Friar from where he lives, our Monk was Fil since his town contains St. and I being the novice lamper amoungest these gentlemen was referred to as Lady D. John being the senior and knowlegeable curmudgeon, our Archbishop. I counted myself lucky to have such mentors. You will find some of these nicknames in the Guild Archives. Neil's labor had been done for some time, but it was not until we revised the website and added the Library page they could be included. Most volumes contain 4 issues and this added to the file size. Please come visit and read them. Neil has made some great information available. For those that do not know me, I am the new Guild Secretary and tend the website. My household contains pressure, and not, and samples of various lighting devices. We enjoy them all and turn no homeless ones away as Neil can confirm. Should you have any questions feel free to email the Guild. THANKS for the good words about LI Dan D.
Thanks for the hard work making this available to us all, for someone's who's happily played with lamps for many years without knowing about all this info its a good read catching up with it all.
I never did work out of it was the Friars who got washed or if they just did the washing. Actually given the name has to derive from pre Tudor times I suspect it comemorates a time when some unfortunate Friar got an unexpected bath in the River Ver here. ::Neil::
Just thought I would add a little here about the Guild web site. There is a lot of information stored away in there. A major resource is of course the patent data base. A whole group of us searched the US patent web site and recorded details of all the lamp related patents. Runs to thousands on all lighting types. Since a lot of European inventors patented their ideas in the US as well as the home country there are a great number of patents there for European inventions. The data base is searchable by name or by patent number and you can link to the USPTO database to view the original patent. One advantage of searching US patents is they are all available on line back to the beginning so there are patents listed in the 19th century that are not available on line from the European data base. We are aware that the Q&A page is not a lively discussion forum but then it was never intended to be. We archive every Q and A and these are also searchable by subject. We don't have resident "Experts" but rely on the experienced amongst collectors and researchers to provide answers. As we don't know everything if no one knows then sometimes there is no answer. Generally it seems to be better used by American owners of American lamps but you will find there are people who regularly provide information on all manner of obscure lighting artefacts from all over the world. So chatty it is not but informative it certainly can be. You just have to ask and its free. ::Neil::
