Topic: HELP IDENTIFY An unusual chinese mercury glass hurricane lamp

[bait]

HELLO ALL....i purchased this AMAZING!!!!!! lamp from a flea market yesterday...in 30 years of collecting this is my first of this form...the hand carved base is in 2 color wood but i do not see a seam where they glued it together.it looks natural.i wonder if this is a ying and yang thing..the glass globe is mercury thats silver and gold and looks reverse painted with chinese art.i looked through a loop and parts look painted but there are areas that the work is so fine i just cant see how it could be done but i put nothing past the chinese with there talent...the top chimney is missing but i do not think it was mercury glass because how would the light pass through...i wish i new what the top globe looked like...thank you in advance for your help

[misha]

No idea about the glass components.

But... some insight into half of it given your curiosity.

The timber is one piece 'quarter sawn' from a log. The colour difference in timber is due to the age of the growth of the tree.  The lighter tone is 'sapwood', softer, being the outer layers [younger] of growth.  Darker tone is Heartwood' typically, harder being the older core that has a higher resin content. Heartwood is less prone to woodworm attack.... it's harder and less tasty for grubs to chew.

if you look at base, you may see matching concentric growth rings in the 'end grain'. Not the sort of thing any timber worker would attempt to laminate/fabricate given the way timber expands and contacts according to ambient humidity, aside of the difficulty in matching radius of two differing species timbers that would differ in expansion characteristics. 

it would appear that the craftsman has carved the block so that transition between sap and heart is central to design. I hazard a guess that is so on opposing side too.  As such the timber has been cut from log as 'quarter sawn'. Grain runs top to bottom... as it grew as wood.

As it goes, it would be more difficult carving the single colour sides due to grain.

btw... wood is the wet green growing stuff in a forest, timber is that wood that has been cut, sawn and seasoned for use. 'green timber' cracks because it shrinks a lot during drying process.

[chopin-liszt]

I can't help much with it either, but I'm aware that when it comes to Satsuma wares, it is the quality of the painting that determines how good it is - and the painting in this, seems to me, to be of very good quality.
The faces are all unique individuals, they have expressions on their faces, there is movement in the clothing and the whole image.

The top part would not neccessarily have been a globe, but perhaps just a plain glass funnel. It wou;d have a slightly bulbous bottom part. You should be able to find one to fit, somewhere.

[misha]

Hi Sue,

Yes, nice detail in the decoration. 
I see it is an electric lamp base too. I suggest rewire and testing by qualified electrician to comply with current safety Standards, prior to use as a lamp fitting.

Best ID info will come from moving this thread to Glass ID, rather than USA manufacture.

[Paul S.]

sorry, regret I can't help with the glass either, but enjoyed reading misha's explanation for the reasons of the two coloured wooden base, and hope there's no objection to my adding a word or two.

Some woods are cut on the quarter to maximise the decorative features of grain/fleck/medullary rays  -  oak in particular shows the last to great effect when cut this way, although not in this instance where it's been used to provide the proportions of sap to heartwood as misha has explained.           
In its simplest form quarter cut means cutting the cross section of the log into four equal parts (along its length) - and when cutting planks from such a quarter, this provides for the growth rings to be more or less at right angles to the plank, and helps with stability, but quarter cutting can be a wasteful process and is reserved usually for better quality hardwoods.         
Next time you get to look at old softwood floor boards, almost every one will show some degree of bowing/cupping, simply because commercially quarter cutting creates too much waste - so they simply cut the log through and through.               Since the wood still contained some moisture, it carried on drying and not being quarter cut, distorted.               
The wider the plank, the greater the bowing, usually  -  thanks goodness for plywood                          
Quarter cut minimises this shrinkage/cupping/bowing, which happens when log is dimensioned in plank form  -  most woods shrink vastly more across their width than their length - caused by shrinkage of the cells within the wood, as they dry and contract.        I get the impression that some of the terminology may be down to where you are on the globe  -  I know the States folk use the word lumber a lot and not sure whether that refers to standing trees or cut logs.


Looking underneath may not show full concentric rings if the piece was cut on the quarter - you may see part of the growth rings only.     These might also be seen on the top collar/rim of wood below the metalwork.
What is the extent of wear, if any, under the wooden base?

I'd agree this piece probably had a clear glass chimney, originally.

Apologies, as usual, for being long winded.

[chopin-liszt]

While the wood talk is of considerable interest, this does not look to me, to be any good quality hardwood!
The grain is quite loose, (I can see odd fibres sticking out of it) and it doesn't even look as if it would cope with administration of fine sandpaper. Bits have fallen off, although I do understand that is the way the grain is running, making it prone to damage, but a better quality wood might have kept its integrity better.
There has been a lot of well carved, but in poor quality wood, coming out from the far east for a few years.
I've even bought some screens, which look to be the same soft, chestnut-coloured wood. They match the darker colour here, not the pale bits.

And the style of the base isn't very Chinese either, it looks more like carvings of acanthus than chrysanthemums. I wonder if it is a (quite happy!) marriage of convenience?
Perhaps an older globe on a newer base.

[Paul S.]

must admit I thought of acanthus as well   ..............   sorry the chats on wood didn't impress you

[chopin-liszt]

The chat on wood impressed me, Paul.
It was the quality of the wood used under this globe that did not.

[glassobsessed]

Looks like a bit of a marriage to me.

John