as lighting had been a huge improvement on candle and paraffin lamps. But its installation was cumbersome and required wall brackets, pipes, and sometimes sconces and was often accompanied by a continuous background “hissing” noise and unpleasant fumes which proved harmful to plants.

Early electric lamps were still relatively dim and fitted on pulleys so they could be lowered when in use (hence the term “Rise and Fall”. Electricity was not really in common use until about the end of the nineteenth century, but its arrival signalled a dramatic change in the style of lighting available. Around 1850 designers had cleverly invented table lamps on long rubber tubes that were attached to a gas pipe outlet that allowed for some mobility, but it was Thomas Edison’s invention of the first really practical incandescent filament bulb that superseded naked flame and gas pipes that opened a new era for designers.

Initially the first electric lighting - as with almost all new inventions, was both expensive and inefficient and therefore did not enjoy universal use until the end of the century.

The gloomy gas lit Victorian interior was replaced with a cleaner and fresher looking style and this new direction drove a profound alteration in interior décor.
Whole walls were composed of continuous art glass often in flowing or geometric shapes. Charles Ashbee installed electricity in his own home in 1895, using translucent enamel shades, hung from ceiling roses of beaten metal.

One of the first houses in England to be purpose-designed for electricity “Standen”, in East Grinstead by Phillip Webb utilised embossed copper sconces.

In the USA, first Louis Tiffany who had been producing stained-glass windows and door panels to add light and a sense of warmth to timber panelled interior spaces since 1883, purchased his own glass furnace in 1892 at Corona, near New York, and began producing the instantly recognisable leaded stained-glass light shades that were to become icons of the Arts and Crafts interior-first in the USA, and then world-wide. These became so popular they were inevitably soon copied to satisfy the huge public demand…(see our “Craftsmen Tiffany” reproduction pieces in our Stained-Glass section).

Gustav Stickley and Elbert Hubbard, produced very simple wooden Arts and Crafts lamps and lanterns (image below) with metal framework and heavy forged iron chain link at their Craftsmen and Roycroft workshops respectively, but the most desirable and truest of the Arts and Crafts pieces of the era was by Dirk Van-Erp, (image below) a Dutch immigrant to America. He initially made lamps for candlesticks, and other accessories entirely by hand from hammering old copper shell cases he removed from a naval ship-yard where he was employed for a time.

He fitted these to distinctive “mica shades” (image below) which diffused them with a beautiful warm soft amber colour, beautifully complementing the beaten copper bases.
American Arts and Crafts architects such as Greene & Greene and Frank Lloyd Wright considered custom designed lighting an essential ingredient of their domestic and commercial commissions.

Wright’s lighting was often recessed into ceilings and bulkheads (or as he called them “decks”) both used leaded or American Oak batons framing geometric patterns drawn from the American south-west , native designs, or motifs.

Perhaps only museums and a selected few very wealthy people can afford signed, original Arts and Crafts lamps and light fixtures, but high quality, reproduction lighting of every variety is available if you are prepared to pay the price for fine craftsmanship.

We invite you to view our gallery of superb hand crafted reproduction light pieces both below, and including Tiffany pieces in our Stained-Glass section. We are pleased to supply a quotation for the manufacture and shipping of these.

For enquiries….Contact Us