Lamp

A fixture that uses electricity to produce visible light, used to illuminate an interior space.

Classification

Mechanisms: glowing
Tasks: illuminate
Materials: glazed ceramic or glass base, metal fittings and stems, fabric or glass shade, incandescent, CFL, or LED bulb, plastic housing and switch components
Historical materials: pottery, earthenware, copper alloy, bronze, glass, marble, brass, tin, mica

Principles

An electrical filament or arc is heated by resistive/electrical energy until it glows white-hot (incandescence);converting electricity directly into visible light without combustion.

Evolution

Middle Kingdom, ca. 1900–1640 BCE
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1915, CC0.
Pottery oil lamp[1]
A pottery oil lamp, one of three excavated together at Lisht North during the Metropolitan Museum's 1913–14 excavations.
Roman Period, 30 BCE–364 CE
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1964, CC0.
Copper alloy oil lamp[2]
A copper alloy oil lamp from Roman Period Egypt — cast in metal rather than the pottery used for the Egyptian lamps on this page.
New Kingdom, ca. 1473–1458 BCE
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1927, CC0.
Pottery oil lamp (New Kingdom)[3]
A pottery oil lamp excavated from the Tomb of Senenmut (TT 353) at Deir el-Bahri, several centuries after the Middle Kingdom lamp above.
ca. 1220–1271
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Clarence H. Mackay, Archer M. Huntington, Stephen H. P. Pell and Bashford Dean, 1928, CC0.
Glazed earthenware lamp[4]
A small glazed-earthenware oil lamp from the Crusader-era Levant — glazed, unlike the plain pottery of the earlier Egyptian lamps on this page.
10th–11th century
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1939, CC0.
Cast bronze lamp[5]
A small cast bronze oil lamp from Iran — cast in bronze rather than the copper alloy of the Roman-period lamp above.
1843–1855
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lenox, Incorporated Gift, 1978, CC0.
Cut and engraved glass lamp[6]
A mid-19th-century American parlor lamp using cut and engraved glass on a marble base.
mid-20th century
Kerosene mantle lamp[7]
A kerosene lamp fitted with a woven mantle that's heated to incandescence by the flame rather than simply lit as a wick, producing much brighter, whiter light. Aladdin Industries' product line — mantel, table, vase, hanging, wall-bracket, and Aladdinette candle-style lamps — was a well-documented American brand of this type, sold well into the era of household electrification for homes and areas electricity hadn't yet reached.
1904–1915
Leaded glass electric lamp[8]
An electric lamp with a bronze base and a shade made of small pieces of colored glass leaded together in a mosaic pattern.
ca. 1912–1915
Hammered copper and mica electric lamp[9]
An electric lamp with a hand-hammered copper base and a shade of mica sheets rather than glass, in the same American Arts and Crafts electric-lamp tradition as the leaded-glass lamp above.
1964
Ceramic lamp[10]
A mass-manufactured lamp from Haeger Potteries.