“He said ‘whatever you collect, collect what you like’,” Bessant remembered. “If you don’t sell it for a profit or you don’t want it anymore, you’re stuck with it.”
He said lamps were not the focus to begin with, but he always liked them.
“I find the lamps fascinating because it was one of the major moves in modern history that got people out of the sunup-to-sundown living. They would get up and work all day when there was daylight and that was it. With the advent of oil lamps and then more specifically kerosene lamps that burned cleaner and brighter, people could do things in the evening like read or sew. You can kind of see when lamps started, about the start of the Industrial Revolution one of the biggest turning points.”
Bessant added it was interesting to see how they developed and were bettered over time. This development more or less stopped when electricity spread.
Lamps of some type have been used for thousands of years, using a variety of fuels. Oil lamps had difficulty as they were low light and the fuel would spoil. Gas light was better, but not portable. In 1846, Dr. Abraham Gesner, a native of Nova Scotia, discovered what would be called kerosene by distilling coal. Kerosene lamps would come from this and revolutionize lighting.
Bessant said he has a couple of the early kerosene lamps, and his collection moves through the 100 years of them, into the 1940’s. He has restored a few of them, replacing missing or broken pieces.
He said as a collector, there are different things to look at. Firstly, a lamp will catch your eye. You might try to complete a set. There might be different sizes in a set and you want to eventually get them all. Getting older lamps is important, but sometimes newer ones are interesting. Bessant gave the example of Aladdin kerosene burning mantle lamps giving off 50 watts of light were made in the 1940’s, with some still being used in cottages.
“There are lamps I’ve bought that aren’t worth anything, but I like them,” he said. “As you’re building a collection, you say ‘I don’t have anything in this line.’ There are some pretty rare lamps that I have found and there are some pretty generic ones that were sold by the hundreds out of a general store.”
Bessant said he gets his lamps from a variety of sources - from auction sales to Ebay. They have been in local people’s houses, barns and the home of what was then a new acquaintance in Ontario.
Older people might remember moths flying into the lamps and knocking over the mantle. Bessant had a few that had a type of stopper to prevent this. Ingenuity is not a new invention.
There are some interesting parts of the lamp story. As Bessant said, using silica glass brings a green hue. To make the lamps a different colour, they put different additions in it. To go yellow or deeper green, they would use uranium. It is a low amount, so it is not dangerous, but it will set off a Geiger counter. If you turn lights off and put on a black light, they will fluoresce.
“It’s bright,” Bessant said. “It’s like they’re on.”
Manganese made the glass more clear, but reacts to UV light by making it mauve. Cobalt will make it dark blue. These are what made lighting of the period, which was utility, more decorative.
Bessant’s lamps are shown in the lobby and inside the first display area of Beckoning Hills. They come in all shapes and sizes, from all eras. There are different styles and colours, made by different companies. There are Aladdin lamps, “Gone With the Wind” lamps with the double globe, the more function-based hurricane lamps. There are Bulls eye lamps made by the Dominion Glass Company of Montreal. It is a display that must be seen to be understood and enjoyed.
Bessant has stories of acquiring items, and is the best guide for a collection one could ask for, having something interesting to add for every lamp. Having his collection at Beckoning Hills pleases him, being able to share a lifetime of his passion.
“To see it all together, that’s a big thing,” he said. “I knew I had a lot of lamps, but to see them all displayed like this together is great to see.”
by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff