$560.00 Hedi Schoop Comedy-Tragedy
$177.50 Beachcomber Accordion
$163.50 Texans/Kron Butterfly and Magnolia
$160.00 Texans/Kron Sportsman Panther (white)
$129.16 Haeger Exotic Princess
$127.37 Sailfish (blue and pink, maker unknown)
$125.50 Hankscraft Squirrel
$119.49 Maddux Flamingo
$111.49 Mermaid (green…Haeger?)
$104.50 Comedy-Tragedy (maker unknown)
$104.48 Maddux Siamese Cat
One of the main sources of confusion among collectors, and sellers, is the true definition of a TV lamp. The term is used quite loosely, often by eBay sellers that understand how avidly that category is watched. So, in the strictest sense, what constitutes a TV lamp? I’ll start with the Jacquelin panther shown above, as I consider it to be the very essence of the genre, the style that immediately comes to mind for most people. The attributes that make this a classic TV lamp are simple: It dates from the ’50s, it is ceramic, it provides back-lighting, it represents a popular mid-century theme (the panther was one of several “exotic” icons of the day) and it was designed and marketed specifically for use atop the family television. This is a TV lamp in its purest form, no question. But there are others, many others that meet the criteria. (more…)
Maybe it’s just me, but I find TV lamp design sketches fascinating, if for no other reason than their extreme rarity. This one, in the collection of Richard Gunter, is a layout sketch by Howard Kron for the Circus Horse TV lamp. The lamp, manufactured by Texans Incorporated, follows this drawing with little deviation. This was clearly a final sketch, with the basic concept having been sorted out in other drawings. A great deal of precision and detail has been applied here and, although it doesn’t appear to exist today, I suspect that a similar rendering was done of the back as well. Designers put a huge amount of work into preparing a lamp for production, with proportions, size, mold design and glaze formulations all taken into account. A larger version of this sketch, as well as several other Kron drawings, will eventually appear on texansinc.com.
This is just personal ramblings, and way off topic, but I’ve got to ask: Where are all the collector websites? All sorts of vintage artifacts are collected, from wall pockets to jigger glasses to stereoscopic viewers, and it baffles me that no one has created websites dedicated to the them. Am I just crazy for posting hundreds of pages on TV lamps? Obviously there’s many enthusiastic TV lamp collectors around, but aren’t there plenty of Rosemeade collectors? Where’s the website? Over the past years tvlamps.net has become hugely popular, and it’s occurred to me that the reason could be because it’s different… an in-depth, perhaps obsessive, website. I’m certainly not doing anything difficult. Anyone that is passionate about a thing can share their interest. On-line commerce will always be the prime user of internet bandwidth, but one can only hope that more collectors/hobbyists will step up and contribute. One doesn’t have to be a computer genius (I’m not), or even have a plan (I didn’t). It just takes enthusiasm.