Thrift Score of the Month: Arctic Candle Lamps

I work half days on Tuesdays and, since I don't get vacation time, my hubby uses some of his to take half days in the summer. He meets me after work, we have lunch and then hit a couple of thrift stores on the way home.

A couple of weeks ago I dragged him to three of them. There was nothing at the first, not much at the second and the third wasn't looking so great until I came across these:

To tell the truth, it was the box that caught my attention - that bright tartan and the Scotsman with a cheeky expression is everything I look for in ephemera. I had a bit of a hard time making sense of the objects in the box - they looked like plastic candles with brass lamp shade holders. I looked a bit closer and there was some writing on the shade part.

It's a bit hard to read in picture but it says:

GREEN'S ARCTIC CANDLE LAMP PATENTED IN

UNITED KINGDOM, USA & OTHER FOREIGN COUNTRIES

The top of the 'candle' part says:

Green's Patent

"ARCTIC"

Candle Lamp

Patd USA Sept 1 96

I bought them, of course. They were ridiculously cheap - about what I would have been willing to pay just for the box! The first thing I did when I got them home was take them apart:

This is the broken one - the little snuffer part has broken off - but it was the only one I could get apart completely. The main part of it is a tube with a whitish sleeve over the outside and a spring mechanism inside that pushes the candle up as it burns. There is a tapered, rounded cap on the top that has an opening just slightly smaller than the candle and the shade holder just slips on over the top of this. The bottom is textured red rubber over a brass cap that screws on. All in all, very interesting, but what was it exactly?

I tracked down a pair on Ebay - they were not identical but it was a starting point. The ones online were white metal with a sort of tripod on the bottom instead of the rubber bit. Curiouser and curiouser! It took a while but I finally tracked down some old ads for this odd object; it turns out that the company that made them was not "Green's" but "The Arctic Light Company" (I have yet to figure out how Green comes into it!)

This comes from The Geffrye Museum of the Home and there are a few other images there related to Arctic Candle Lamps. This is one of the things I love about vintage - the research and finding new resources. I will be spending a few hours looking through their collections sometime soon!

So, now I know. The rubber end is made to fit into a standard candle holder and the whole contraption is designed to look like a candle and burn like a candle but not to drip wax like a candle! According to the back of this advertisement, the ones I have are the less expensive, unplated version. After reading a couple of ads, I'm still not sure what the white sleeve is made of. I can only assume that it is an early plastic like celluloid - which is a bit alarming because celluloid is highly flammable!

I still need to clean these up before they can go into my Lived In Vintage Etsy store. I'm sad that one of them is broken, but all the parts are still there, held on with very old tape, so it might be fixable. Either way, they are both usable and even come with bits of vintage candles!

I'm always amazed at how a few dollars at a thrift store can provide so much research fun. Here are a couple of other bits I dug up on the Arctic Light Company:

An 1899 photo of the premises of the Arctic Light Company
Another advertisement from the Geffrye Museum
A newspaper ad from the Westminster Budget, January 14, 1898

New Age Thrift Store

A new stop for Wild Vintage hunting on Quadra!

One of the long streets running through Victoria, Quadra has three thrift stores that I hit at least once a month. On the way back from one of my expeditions, I caught a glimpse of this place as the bus went by. This weekend I dragged my ever patient husband out for a first look. It's close to our flat so we enjoyed a great walk through one of the more interesting neighborhoods in our area. I had to grab a picture of this:

The store is divided into two sections, each with its own entrance. The first one was mostly clothing but it also included some household stuff and jewelry. I took a poke through the clothes and they seemed to have pretty good quality stuff at reasonable prices. There was a good size section of children's clothes as well. I saw some vintage but the only thing that caught my eye was an 80s jumpsuit (and I'm not ready to face the 80s again yet). Not much in the way of jewelry or purses, although there was a red leather bag with Prada stamped on it - I would have bought it for $4 but the inside was filthy. Sigh...

On to the next section. Mostly new stuff - electronics, movies and games. There was a cute display of frogs near the entrance:

The interesting part was at the back - a warehouse like area with wooden shelves to the ceiling. Unfortunately, there wasn't much that I would consider vintage but it was a lot of fun to poke through things nonetheless. My husband pointed out these two alligators:

They look like they could be from the 70s but they didn't have any marks and they were a bit large for me to take a chance on. There were a few other interesting things, including an ornate antique table, chairs and buffet set that looked like it had seen better days. In the end the only thing I bought was a set of vintage invitations in the shape of hamburgers (no picture yet but they'll be in my Seagull Island Etsy shop soon).

All in all, not a terribly successful hunt. It's a great place for newer stuff and I'm sure the husband and I will be returning so he can look through all the DVDs and games while I do a proper search through the clothes. I might add it to my monthly Quadra expedition as well - who knows what kind of treasures might show up?

Like a unicorn with its very own rainbow chaser!

Public Domain Images from Yale

Yale is offering free access to online images of objects from it's museums, archives and libraries. Of particular interest to us Wild Vintage lovers is the collection of public domain images that this will give us access to.

Check it out here:

Yale Digital Commons

According to the Yale Office of Public Affairs and Communications:

"The goal of the new policy is to make high quality digital images of Yale's vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available."

Full article here

Letting Go

I have to admit, I have a problem.

I have such a hard time letting go of my vintage treasures. I'll buy something and put it away thinking "I can make something amazing with this". And there it will sit - unused, just waiting for the day when I have the time and energy to do something amazing.

But sometimes life throws you a curve ball. After two and a half years of being a widow, I reconnected with the man I fell in love with almost 30 years ago. We started talking and then visiting and finally decided that we couldn't stand to be apart. We decided that the best thing was for me to move to the west coast and the rest, as they say, is history.

Getting ready to move was daunting. I finally had to face the fact that I had way too much stuff. I had boxes and cabinets packed with vintage magazines, maps, music, jewelry and purses. I had bought most of it with the intention of selling it online and I'd had some success (a bunch of 1950s magazine ads for Guinness beer had kept us in groceries for a month or two) but mostly it was just piling up.

It's amazing how making a new start will let you look at the things around you with fresh eyes. I realized that I was literally holding on to the past and I needed to start letting go. I was pretty brutal. I sold a huge amount of my craft supplies through Kijiji and sent bags and bags of stuff to our local thrift store. I got rid of at least three quarters of my purses. I threw away so much junk that the city garbage collectors wouldn't pick it up! I didn't get rid of everything - my son was remaining in the apartment so I was able to store a fair amount of the good stuff - but I made a lot of progress. Everything I got rid of took me closer to the future I wanted and I felt lighter with each decision.

I could only take the essentials when I moved. I was going from a two bedroom flat that had one entire room devoted to my stuff to a one bedroom apartment with next to no storage space. I was travelling across the country by plane and the most I could bring was four pieces of checked luggage (three rubbermaid bins and my suitcase), two carry-ons and the cat. Of course, one of those bins was full of my favourite vintage treasures and craft supplies - like I said, the essentials!

Since moving I've continued to collect but this time I promised myself I'd make a business out it and I think I've made a pretty good start with my Etsy store and on Ebay. I still can't resist the occasional purse but I have strict guidelines; I only collect box purses now (remind me to show you my new lime Lifesaver tin purse) and I've been really good about it.

Still, tucked into my collection of cigar boxes or sitting in my minuscule work area are those treasures that call to me to be creative. I've been here for over a year now - maybe it's time for me to finally try something amazing.

Stay tuned, when I do you'll be the first to know!

Time Machine

There's a great shop on Main Street in Vancouver. In addition to being a junk collectors' haven, there are some wonderful sculptures created by the store's owner.

I love all his sculptures (I really want on of his espresso maker robots) but this time machine really caught my eye. It just screams Steampunk - although I don't know if the guy had ever heard of the term before I came in.

The store is called Old Stuff Two and is at 4510 Main Street, Vancouver, BC. No email, no website - he just sells through the store.

More pictures here on Flikr

New Addition to Flickr Commons

The latest addition to this great collection of public domain photographs is images from the George Eastman House collection. There are some great images here - colour and black and white.

The portrait shown here is by Silberstein, circa 1915, and titled Woman's Face.


Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing out this great resource.

Vintage Photos from the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian has a great Flickr photostream of vintage (and some modern) photos. This one of Felix Nadar, Photographer and Aeronautical Scientist looked very steampunk.

The best part? The photos are listed as having "No known copyright restrictions" which means they are in the public domain!

More info about that here