For someone whose first love is fine furniture, Chad Richards of Camden is very familiar with lighting, particularly whale oil lamps. Chad, who along with his late wife, Barbara, started The Richards Antiques, said it was his lamp repair skills, and not a decline of interest in furniture, that led to his lighting specialty. Prior to the Roosevelt administration, a tariff was imposed on items made after 1830. Roosevelt legislation subsequently defined antiques as items older than 100 years. I can t always say where an item is from, and I ve certainly made mistakes, but I do look for the scarcer items, which helps.
Chad prefers whale oil lamps to kerosene for that reason.
If it has a crack, don t buy it unless you want it for purely decorative purposes, as cracks are too hard and expensive to repair. Regionally, we re fortunate, as whale oil lamps were popular in New England. Most were made in the Boston or Sandwich areas. If you re thinking of conversion to electricity, it s important to retain the original state of the piece as much as possible. Chad reports that he won t drill pottery unless someone insists on it.