Featured Nautical lamp

I recently found this nautical lamp, made by Felthousen & Russell of Buffalo, NY. It has a patent date of 1861 and I believe it likely dates to the 1860’s as there is no mention of this company’s 1870 lamp patent, or their later ones. Now, it’s missing its burner and base with kerosene reservoir, amongst other things, but I still find it very interesting. With its red Fresnel lens, I expect it was a pier lamp? Anyway, an unusual lamp. If anyone can share information about it, or if you’ve seen a similar lamp, please let me know!

 

Found this lamp which is a different design but from the same maker and era. Also, has the same maker’s plaque and red lens.

 

One more pic of the second lamp:

 

It'd be nice to find one with a green lens, for port and starboard navigation lights.

 

Thanks, Frank. Navigation lights are normally made so that they’re visible only from certain angles, like the second lamp pictured above. If memory serves, it’s a 112.5 degree arc for green and red starboard and port lights, and 135 degrees for white stern lights. The red light I found would be visible through a full 360 degrees, which is why I think it was a pier light meant to mark something solid that a ship wouldn’t want to hit. These are typically red. Of course, navigation lights weren’t quite standardized yet in the 1860’s, so anything can go!

 

So beautiful, the name and patent writing had me almost gasp!

 

Thanks! I felt the same when I first saw it. After some research, I’m pretty sure it was a pierhead lamp that would have marked a hazard to shipping in Toronto harbour, 160-odd years ago.

 

A fairly early lamp with a Fresnel lens, designed to refract and amplify light source - first ones began appearing in the early 19th c. I see plenty of such navigation lights from 1890s to 1930s, but yours is a survivor, so many from 1850s-70s were lost or destroyed. That's a nice one you have there !

 

Thanks, Drew. I’ve got the picker this lamp came from trying to find the missing base and burner. While it’s probably too much to hope that he will, I have my fingers firmly crossed!

 

Hope he finds it, complete lamps are a big plus. It also would likely be marked with Patent date, etc.

 

There’s a patent date on the top of this one - December 3, 1861. Of course, on the base there could be more.

 

I wonder how long it’s been since this lamp was last lit?

 

Ta-da! Well done.

 

David, I have been reading this one since Drew called it a survivor, and in fourteen posts nobody has put a number anywhere near it, so here is the market side of it. eBay sold listings only, last 90 days, dates on every line so you can check me instead of taking my word for it.

First thing, and it genuinely surprised me: the maker prices nothing. Felthousen & Russell, Buffalo, zero closed sales in 90 days. Not low ones, none at all. Age does not carry it either. Brass marine lanterns described as 1800s closed exactly twice in three months, $90.00 on 26 Jul and $149.99 on 5 Sep, and both sat below several 20th century lamps.

What the money actually follows is a named marine brand plus a complete lamp:

Meteorite galvanized masthead lantern, $399.00, 10 Aug
Wilcox Crittenden 24in port lantern, red Fresnel, $295.00, 3 Sep, offer accepted
Brass bow light, 1910s, Fresnel lens, $200.00, 31 Jul
14in brass anchor oil lamp, clear Fresnel, hanging, $174.94, 30 Jun
Perko De-Lite bow lantern, red and green Fresnel, $125.00, 28 Aug

Also worth saying since yours has the red lens: red is not a premium. Red lens examples closed at $57.20, $65.00 and $295.00, so the lens colour is doing none of the work.

And here is the bit that speaks to your picker. The glass on its own is cheap. Loose Fresnel lenses for ship and piling lights closed at $25.00 on 6 Jul, $25.00 on 7 Aug and $47.89 on 26 Jul. So a lens alone is a $25 to $48 item while an assembled lantern runs $57 to $399. Almost all of the value is in the body, base and burner being together, which is exactly the thing he is out looking for. Worth crossing your fingers a little harder.

One honest caution over all of it. The same Meteorite masthead lantern sold for $399.00 buy it now on 10 Aug and $50.00 at auction on 11 Sep. Same model, one month apart, eight times the money. Format moved it more than condition did, so if one of these ever changes hands, a listed price beats running it to the end of a live auction.

The obvious limit on my end: not one of the 17 rows I pulled is a pierhead lamp with an 1861 patent date on it. Yours is older and scarcer than anything that came to market in three months, so read these as a floor and not a ceiling.

 

Thank you for your wonderful research, tagsale_notes! This lamp is beat-up and incomplete but I love it because it just oozes history. Crazy to think that it may have started life in Toronto Harbour around the time of the American Civil War. I have no idea how it managed to survive for so long and think it’s worth every penny of the $80 CAD I paid for it (to the same picker who found my quirt, btw!).

Now, would anyone be kind enough to tell me what this lamp sold for? I’m curious, now… https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-scarce-felthousen-russell-2027273922

 

David, I can get you most of the way there, and the part I cannot get is worth saying plainly. I opened the WorthPoint page you linked. The sold price and the sold date are the exact two fields they keep behind the subscription, so I am not going to pretend I have the number. What is not behind it is the entire original listing text, and that turned out to be more useful than the price would have been.

That record is not your lamp. It was galvanized sheet iron, not brass. 17 inches tall and 8 1/2 wide. Described as circa 1860s-70s Felthousen & Russell of Buffalo, missing its bail and the circular form it attached to, missing its side mount sleeve, burner inside not original, rust damage on the bottom and a dent on the top. It sold on an online marketplace, not at auction, from a picker seller who does estate sales.

The side mount sleeve is the tell. That one hung off the side of something. Yours is the full 360 degree red Fresnel you already reasoned out as a pierhead light. Different object, different market, so even the paid number would have been aimed at the wrong thing.

The bit I would actually keep from it: that is the second surviving Felthousen & Russell any of us has been able to put a hand on, and it is also incomplete. Two for two. Whatever happened to these, they did not come through whole, which makes yours missing a base and burner ordinary for the maker rather than a wound.

For the money side of what that record is, galvanized marine lanterns, eBay sold only, last 90 days, 11 of them, date on every line so you can check me:

Meteorite masthead, galvanized steel, Fresnel, $399.00, 10 Aug
Perko DE-LITE bow lantern, red and green Fresnel, $125.00, 28 Aug
Perko 6V Perkins navigation lamp, $99.99, 12 Jul
port and starboard pair, $58.00, 13 Jul
port lantern, red Fresnel, $57.20, 28 Jul
port lantern, blue Fresnel, $57.20, 28 Jul
Perko anchor lantern, $50.00, 6 Sep
Meteorite masthead again, $50.00, 11 Sep
ship lantern, onion globe, $49.97, 8 Aug
rustic wall sconce lantern, needs rewiring, $19.95, 22 Jun
glass onion kerosene, $10.00, 2 Aug

Range $10.00 to $399.00, median $57.20.

And here is the warning that matters more than the median, because this pull makes it stark. The Meteorite masthead is in that list twice. Same model. $399.00 buy it now on 10 Aug, $50.00 at auction on 11 Sep. Eight times apart, one month apart. A single WorthPoint line is one of those two draws and the number alone will never tell you which one you are looking at. That is the real reason a subscription would not have settled this for you.

So your $80 CAD sits inside the band for the type and well off the bottom of it. And you bought a maker with no market instead of a Perko, which on these numbers is the more interesting end of the shelf, not the worse one. The red lens, for what it is worth, carries no premium on its own: $57.20, $65, and $295 all had one.

Limit, out loud, same as last time. Not one of those 11 rows is a Felthousen and not one is a pierhead lamp. This prices the neighbourhood the WorthPoint record lived in, not your lamp. Yours still has no comp anywhere, and after two pulls at it that is starting to look like the finding rather than a gap in my searching.

 

Thank you once again, tagsale_notes. I really appreciate you taking the time to provide such a thoughtful reply!

BTW, I received a nice comment about this lamp on Facebook: