Pottery Lamp
notes: label: Description
content: This clay lamp has a rounded body with a looped handle. The lamp has a small hole in the middle that was used for filling the lamp with oil.
label: Description
content: 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 sixth in his chronological development of underground lighting, and he claims that the lamp is an “original pottery lamp used by the Christians in the Catacombs. Among early mining operations on record are the plaster mines of Rome known as the Catacombs. The product of these mines was soft stone or volcanic deposit of a kind of lava. It was porous and absorbed odors. When pulverized and mixed with other materials and water it was used in laying the brick in building ancient Rome, some walls which stand today. These mines were dig with olive oil lamps. It was in these mines that St. Peter converted the early Christians.”
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mining
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content: Mining Lamps
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content: Work
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: Grant Wheat Collection
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mary R. Wheat
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AG.MHI-MN-8169
label: accession number
content: 239148
label: catalog number
content: MHI-MN-8169
objectType: label: Object Name
content: lamp, pottery
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/8 in x 4 1/2 in x 3 1/2 in; 6.096 cm x 11.43 cm x 8.89 cm