Object Story: A Short History of Lighting

Earliest Lamps

The “betty lamp” or “iron betty” is a very basic design of an oil- or grease-burning lamp very similar to ancient Greek, Roman, and Assyrian designs. The betty lamp is typically made of wrought iron. The one-piece lamp includes a nose or spout for the wick and the handle on the opposite side. This example shows the lamp attached to a stand to help make it more stable and the chain allows the lamp to move up and down. The betty lamp was very smoky and gave off a very small amount of light.  The oil or grease came from animal fat or fish oil.   One of the biggest problems was the open wick, which could drip oil.  One improvement added in the late seventeenth century was a circular tube to hold the wick and a deeper chamber to hold more oil.

Rushlights

This rush holder was designed to hold a rushlight: a long, thin reed that was dipped in wax. The rushlight would be clipped to the top of the stand and the length of the reed rested at an angle on the curved arm. To make a rushlight, colonists would gather rush plants—plants with cylindrical stalks or hollow, stemlike leaves—soak them, and peel away the outer skin to get to the reedy interior. These were soaked in animal fat or fish oil and then dried. A thirty-inch rushlight could burn for about an hour. A pound of rushes could make about 1600 individual rushlights. That is about eight hundred hours of light and might last about thirty-three days. A very frugal family might make a rushlight last for almost six hours over the course of time and many could make a pound and a half of rushes last for an entire year. Rush holders like this one were usually brought along from England or made by a local blacksmith. Very few are thought to be American made.

Candles

Most candles were made from tallow or animal fat or beeswax. A tallow candle is either dipped or molded. This candle mold can make thirty-six candles at once and saved a lot of time (it took almost twenty-five dips to make a drip candle, about seventeen hours of work). Tallow is a kind of animal fat that comes from sheep, hogs, and cattle. Hog tallow was very smelly and smoky; the best candles were a blend of sheep and beef tallow.  To make a tallow candle, the fat is weighed, mixed, and cut into pieces to melt them quickly. When the tallow is fully melted, a chandler, or candle maker, skims off any impurities and then pours through a sieve into a tub and then into the mold. November was considered the best season for making candles at home because it happened at the same time as the annual animal slaughter.

Candleholders

Candleholders have changed very little over the last several centuries. This candlestick has a socket to hold the candle. Early candlesticks that appeared between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries just had a spike to stick a candle. Because candles are adaptable and portable, people invented many ways to hold a candle whether it was to attach to a wall, a ceiling, or to carry around. Wrought iron was too hard to make into candle sticks and tin was the more convenient metal to use, but tin was not easily decorated or ornamented. Brass was preferred to make more graceful designs, and it could be polished.