Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: obscurities on May 14, 2009, 12:06:05 AM
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I received this lamp from my mom, who had it as long as I can remember, It is a Marbro lamp and was purchased in the late 1950's in Los Angeles. There is a small decal on the upper portion of the body that simply states "Hand Blown Swedish Glass". I have also picked up a slightly shorter Emerald green version of it. It does not have the decal, but the manufacturer is the same. Does anyone know who in Sweden at the time would have blown glass lamp bodies such as this? I am also interested in how long it would have been produced for. I was told at one point that it was only produced for a couple of years.
Thanks in advance, Craig
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your lamp was probably made at Elme Glasbruk.
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Whilst the glass is marked Swedish the lamp fittings look singularly American to my eyes.
American shades have their fittings at the top and so lamps for that market require oversized bulbholder shafts and have a finial for securing the shade, whereas European and Scandinavian shades generally have their fittings towards the bottom so that they require little/no shaft and are almost always, in some way, attached to or below the bulbholder itself.
I suspect it was an American lighting firm importing Swedish vases in bulk and converting them to lamps - this way their product had the kudos of being a Swedish lamp but with much smaller import costs. It's not an unheard of, or even an unusual, process - I've found several international companies that have done similar with Holmegaard glass.
So this may break out a few other possibilities - I think there were several Swedish factories producing similar Arthur Percy-esque vases.
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Marbro was a high end American lamp company. They produced a line very high end lamps using not only Swedish glass, but a variety of nice Italian designs. I am simply looking for possibilities of the companies that may have produced the glass piece for Marbro. This particular Marbro design is quite rare (I have seen one other in 10 years+ on ebay) and I have just always been curious about the glass portion and it's source.... The glass is very high quality and skillfully blown and I am assuming that the Emerald green one I have would have come from the same source.
Thanks, Craig
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Sorry, I missed the Marbro bit in your original post - it serves me right for posting before I'd properly woken up!
I found this history of Marbro in my bookmarks - it's an interesting read, but unfortunately it doesn't give up the names of any outsourced companies:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Marbro-Lamp-History&id=174559
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Thanks for the link, it is quite interesting...... My mom lived in Glendale, an LA suburb in the early to mid 50's, and most likely bought the lamp at their shop, as she would have never employed a designer..... I was aware of the company and the current demand for their lamps, I had never read anything on the company history though......
I did not mention it , but the glass itself is 33 inches tall, which may limit the number of firms employing the talent to blow this. It has never been apart, so I do not know if it has a pontil, or if it was blown into a mold from the top. I do not see any mold marks of any kind anywhere on the glass on this one, or the green one. The glass on my green one is 23 inches.
Craig