Those of you that know me know that I have a pretty good memory for details. I can remember in detail clothes and toys that I had as a kid, as well as items that were in our house. Yet today I often can't remember where I put something that I just had in my hand ten minutes earlier. But I digress. I remember everything about the living room in our home. We didn't go there much; we entertained either in the family room or at the kitchen table. But we did have an official living room. It had a very nice coffee table which held Dad's very nice German stereo, and had a matching olive green and gold couch and a chair, and also a very cool rust colored crush velvet chair. Back in the day, those colors were the rage. In a corner over an end table was a very cool gold crushed velvet hanging light. Unfortunately for me, it was not a hanging oil lamp like you see above.
Mom and Grandma would never buy the extremely cool hanging oil lamp, no matter how much I begged for one. "It will break and get oil all over the carpet" was always their reply. Loretta, a good friend of the family, had one hanging in her living room, and whenever we would go visit her, that was the first place I would go. I remember standing there for what seemed like hours, just staring at the lamp as the little beads of oil dripped down continuously. And I don't remember Loretta ever saying "That lamp broke and got oil all over the carpet." But that's beside the point.
Just about every hanging oil lamp I saw was the same - they all had an almost-anatomically correct naked lady figurine in the middle, and the light bulb was above her head, shining down on her like she was on stage. She was surrounded by the wires where the little drops of oil would drip down. I never thought about it until now, but I'm guessing there was a tiny pump of some sort to pump the dripped oil back up to the top of the lamp so it could drip down the wires again. Anyhoo, the lamp was cool and it bummed me out that we never had one. The gold crushed velvet lamp just wasn't the same.
1 comment:
Our next door neighbor who was very Liberace-like had one, and I too was fascinated by it. I love going to his house and visiting with him and his elderly mother. We'd listen to Don Ho records and watch the oil drip down the string.
I don't think theirs ever broke either.
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