Lighting Styles

Arts & Crafts (Craftsman) 1905-1935: Frank Lloyd Wright began developing the Prairie School architecture in 1912, but he was pre-dated by about seven years by others developing the “Arts & Crafts” or “Craftsman” or “Mission” style. The style is typified by austerely straight lines forming squares and rectangles, with woodwork mostly in oak. Light fixtures were made for gas/electric combination and electric use, mostly in brass or iron, reflecting Mission styling with the use of square brass tubing and square glass shades. Stained glass table lamps were fashioned with square oak frames and square oak bases. Hammered iron and copper in basic shapes on heavy chains made up a class of “Craftsman” styled fixtures for this architectural style. This is one style where it is magically satisfying to match Arts & Crafts fixtures with Arts & Crafts settings.

Federal 1700-1810: This is the style of most of our founding fathers’ architecture, including many early public buildings, Colonial style homes and most plantations, and the style has undergone many revivals right up to modern home building. The original lighting consisted of real candle fixtures, candle chandeliers, candelabras, candle lanterns, various candle hurricane lamps and candlesticks, and toward 1800, oil lamps and whale oil lamps. Many of the fixtures were made of tin or iron, sometimes combined with wood, and looked primitive, while others were crafted in pewter, brass and silver, and looked elegant. These lights were hand made and led to the typical “Colonial Style” light fixture that we see so much of today, typified by “S” curved arms and a central hanging oversized ball shape.

Aesthetic Eastlake/Italianate Victorian 1860-1885: This style was named after an American furniture maker who used basic geometric designs, parallel groove carving, “spoon” carving (looks like leaves carved out of a flat surface by a sharpened spoon), and burled veneer highlights. The Italianate period in Victorian lighting and architecture used classic motifs such as urns, soldiers, knights, coats-of-arms, maidens in togas, hunters and all types of animals. Lighting included kerosene and oil fixtures and lamps, and gas lighting. The ceiling and wall fixtures were made of iron, spelter or “pot metal”, brass, and “red brass” (more copper). Lamps were constructed of all those elements plus glass, bronze, marble, slate, granite and onyx, and many brass items were plated with nickel. Examples from this period are hard to come by, and you can generally count on outstanding metal work and styling, great heft and balance, and exceptional attention to detail.

Eastlake Victorian 1870-1900: Basically the same styling as above, Eastlake Victorian exemplifies simpler and lighter construction and design. This lighting consisted of kerosene and oil, gas, and combination gas & electric fixtures. Hanging or wall mounted kerosene fixtures were cast-iron or brass, while the gas and gas/electric combination fixtures were almost always made of brass. Some of the best intricately etched and cut glass shades were crafted for these fixtures and many used hanging crystal decoration.

Many farm homes and small town homes were built exhibiting the Eastlake style during this period, as well as many city dwellings. Look for gas pipes built into the walls (wall sconces were usually mounted at shoulder height) if you’re in a city or a small town near a navigable river, indicating original gas lighting. Early wiring near the pipes indicate original gas/electric combination lighting. In rural Eastlake styled homes, a lack of gas pipes in the walls (even if it looks like electric wires were installed early) indicates that your original lighting was kerosene.

Victorian 1880-1915: Victorian is commonly (and unjustly) thought of as an excess of curvy, lacy, embellished elements, making tedious dusting problems, and this may hold true for the light fixtures and lamps of the period. Certainly, some of the most graceful, elegant, beautifully detailed yet functional pieces ever created, were crafted in this period. Encompassing the sinewy lines of the Art Nouveau movement and the geometric balance of the Eastlake influence, Victorian styling remains popular, even in modern homes. This period covers kerosene and oil, gas, gas/electric combination, and electric lighting. Mostly made of brass, some examples of fixtures made of iron can be found.

Gas Fixtures: The first gas fixtures were modeled after kerosene fixtures. The first electric fixtures were modeled after gas fixtures. No (or almost no) Victorian styled gas, or gas/electric combination, or electric fixtures hung from a chain. Look only for fixtures that connect all the way to the light source by tubing of some sort, if you want Victorian styling.

Gas was meant to burn upward (at about one candlelight), with or without a glass shade, with an open flame. In 1888 Wellsbach invented a way to burn gas downward through a mantel, increasing illumination greatly. Edison perfected his incandescent bulb in 1880, and builders around the country began installing wire in homes for lighting about 1900 even though it would be years before electricity would reach that location. Gas/electric combination lighting would continue to be installed in new homes until about 1920 because electricity would have outages of a month at a time, and gas provided alternative lighting.

Georgian Revival 1905-1930: This is actually an earlier style of architecture, but it had a widespread revival in the U.S. during this period. The Georgian style is important for lighting history because most of the fine quality “Art Glass” artisans developed lighting for this style. Quezel, Steuben, Tiffany, Handel, Pairpoint and others made wonderful glass for electric lighting and lamps, which became the models for lighting companies to emulate. Much of the “Art Deco” styled fixtures were developed from 1920 – 1930 as less expensive replacement electric lighting for the dangerous gas lighting. These were chain hung electric fixtures, sometimes illuminating with unshaded bulbs (they were the latest technology and they were so pretty!), but mostly with glass shaded bulbs.

View samples of these lighting styles at Calco Lighting