Science & Art

The first lamp arrived on Saturday. I gotta say, it's not just a lamp, it's a work of art. Seriously, this is the kind of stuff that makes us giddy and the thought of breaking it down and carefully restoring it to it's former glory is very inspiring. The photos are of the lamp having just been pulled out of the box, so it's a little dusty.



As we suspected from looking at the original photo, the shade and socket are brass. We aren't sure about the neck and base just yet. The Mason's emblem is in pretty good shape. The cord is an entertaining patch job and we would replace it with cloth covered wire if it weren't going on the wall. Then again, we have that second lamp coming in...



The socket has a porcelain insulator inside and is in wonderful condition other than needing a good cleaning and new wiring, and we're so using it. In the second photo, Michael is trying to clean the plastic switches with GOJO to see if they're made of Bakelite. It works the same way that using Scrubbing Bubbles in that whatever you're using to rub the cleaner on with will turn yellowish. GOJO cleans Bakelite to a beautiful shine, and maybe I'll be able to convince Michael to post the process of when he buffed the dial of his new Variac. His first attempt tells us no, but he's going to try it again now that the socket unit is completely disassemlbled.

I hope this won't take too long as I want to declare our room finished for this phase. Garden weather is upon us!