Object Details
- Description
- This is an open clay lamp with a flat bottom. The center of the lamp would have been filled with oil, with the wick dipping into the fuel.
- Electric cap lamp inventor Grant Wheat’s personal collection of mining lamps was donated to the museum in 1962. Many of these objects were depicted in his “Story of Underground Lighting” published in the “Proceedings of the Illinois Mining Institute” in 1945. This lamp is third in his chronological development of underground lighting, of which he writes, “The first pottery lamps were made like a clam shell, except that the bottom was flat to prevent tipping over, they used olive oil in the south and some sort of fiber for the wick.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Mary R. Wheat
- ID Number
- AG.MHI-MN-8171
- accession number
- 239148
- catalog number
- MHI-MN-8171
- Object Name
- lamp, pottery
- Measurements
- overall: 1 1/2 in x 4 1/2 in; 3.81 cm x 11.43 cm
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Mining
- Mining Lamps
- Work
- Industry & Manufacturing
- Grant Wheat Collection
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_872609
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a6-c185-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
