We bought this to be a desk lamp, and purchased a 60W ST19 Edison bulb. MY RETINAS!! It's SO bright! So we got a 40W thinking that would be better, but we were wrong. Still unbelievably bright and painful to be within 5 feet of. 
It's a nice, simple design; good quality and the on/off switch being on the cord isn't *that* annoying, but it is absolutely not a desk lamp. Unless you want to blind yourself. We'll be donating it and looking for something with a shade.