Explore the site - please feel free to comment on what you would like to see.

How to identify a lamp - general pointers using the lamp pictured as an example.

Note staple is large and ‘solid’ looking.

Top comes off, and gauze is single, so this is a bonneted Clanny type. Later bonnets would have pressed sections (usually when made in Lancashire). This hasn’t, but it is early. Cookes had thinner bonnets with no rivets on seams.

Don’t forget the marks. A D type mark is indicative of Richard Johnson Claphom Morris. Tiny numbers can point to Cooke of Birmingham.  Starbusts indicate E.T and W

Number and thickness of bars (also known as wires or pillars). If they are thin this suggests an earlier lamp.

Type of bottom - if solid this is indicative of Lancashire maker. Also note the depth of the ridge on the base. If brass is very ‘white’ this

might mean a Wigan lamp. Yellow here though.

If the lamp dates to 1911 and later there is an excellent chance that it would appear as an approved lamp in the lists printed at that time, which allows its model and maker to be found. Before then there are some adverts and catalogues surviving, but otherwise its a search for a named example.  

Bonnet

Middle Ring

Oil Vessel

Bottom ring

Hasp

Cage