ROMANCE OF LIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1939, Page 10

ROMANCE OF LIGHTING

THE CANDLE-LIGHT VOGUE. The maid or perhaps madame herself presses a little switch and the boudoir is illuminated with light. A miracle that is taken as a matter of course in 1939. What does history tell us? In primitive days our forefathers made firebrands of resinous woods, rope soaked in resin or fibre soaked in fat or wax. The servants preceded their masters with torches similarly contrived. Oil lamps were invented several centuries before the birth of Christ. Most of the lamps consisted of a retort into which was inserted a large wick which burned like a torch. For centuries there were no improvements except in design and ornamentation. The torches and lamps had large burning surfaces so that draughts would not easily extinguish them; hence incomplete combustion and clouds of foul-smelling smoke. Indoor life at night was not pleasant, and it is reasonable to assume that the adage, “Early to bed and early to rise,” is at once ancient and based on creature comfort. Old houses in some European countries still have holes in the roof for the smoke to escape. The great revolution in domestic lighting took place in the 12th century, when the tallow candle was introduced. It burned brilliantly, and the absence of smoke and smell to any annoying degree made it a marvellous advance on the old oil lamps. The cost of tallow, however, restricted the candles to the well-to-do. The poor still stifled in theii- humble homes. The tallow candle reigned supreme as illuminant for no less a period than 600 years. , MODERN AND DECORATIVE. hr 1783 an inventor named Leger exhibited a broad flat wick in which the air could come into close contact with the burning oil. He thus secured fairly good combustion. For the first time the world saw a lamp with a steady and practically smoke-free flame. Three years later another inventor produced a circular’ wick, such as we are familial- with now. The air came up the centre as well as on the outside. The glass chimney was the next achievement, and by that time the problem of combustion was regarded as solved. In these times there are few smart homes without decorative reminders of the medieval candle-sticks, even if the ones displayed are only modern copies. vVe are. in fact, in this very year, making much of candlelight. The Press refers now and then to “the candle-light vogue.” One of its followers in England is the Duchess of Buccleuch. She has special deep-ivory wax candles that burn very slowly and without flickering, placed in a massive silver chandelier with a design of mermaids. In her pale green dining-room in Grosvenor Place the effect is intriguingly beautiful. Thus we, who, by touching a button, can transform midnight into day, find delight in reviving on a grand scale a form of lighting that in a primitive form was to our ancestors a miracle of perfection compared with their-for-mer smoky oil lamps.