One of my favorite lights originated in the New York City underground at the turn of the last century. Subway lights epitomize the early industrial style with their strong utilitarian lines and their clever solution to a unique problem – how do you keep a glass shade from shaking loose in an environment full of vibration? As far as I can tell these lights weren’t used on the subway cars themselves (early photos show only bare bulbs in the subway cars), although the same solution was used for lights on more posh train cars of the era. But the subway platforms provided enough vibration that...

One category of our industrial lights are termed “Explosion Proof” which leads many people to wonder why you’d need to design a light to survive an  explosion. But in truth, they get their name from how they are designed to avoid catastrophe. Explosion Proof light fixtures are designed to completely encase the hot lamp in an air tight environment so volatile gasses in a factory work room, from such things as spray paint or heavily used solvents, won’t make contact with the socket and spark an explosion.   To ensure this the lights are designed using heavy cast aluminum...

Camphor glass has a cloudy white – sort of grayish actually – color which makes some also call them “clam broth” shades and is produced by exposing glass to hydrofluoric acid vapors. Camphor glass gained wide popularity during the mid 19th Century and was often used for jewelry and decorative items for the home such as vases, decanters and candle sticks, but it also had wide use for light shades. When unlit the light shades have a distinctive grayish appearance with a soft luminance, but when lit they show up as an off white. Most camphor glass shades are quite thick and...

  Before Edison perfected the incandescent lightbulb a much lesser known technology was used to create electric light. Carbon Arch Lamps were manufactured as early as the 1850′s but not until a few technical advances of their own did they find wider use beginning in the 1870′s. Arc lamps generated light by passing electricity between two carbon rods. The lamp was ignited with the rods touching and then were slowly drawn apart until a bright illuminating arc developed. The carbon rods would eventually burn down and need to be replaced after only about 80 hours of use, but the light they...

Originally slag glass was produced by combining slag from an iron ore furnace with glass which produced an opaque glass used to produce decorative items. But the term has been applied more recently to a late 19th Century style which combined two colors of glass into a marbled, textured product often using greens and browns. This translucent glass when illuminated produces a very dramatic effect while emitting a soft and pleasing glow. Some believe that this style of combining the various colors of glass together came about when at the end of a work day the smaller batches of remaining molten glass...