RSS Feed

Tag Archives: chalkware continental

Rare 1943 Lumitone Radio Lamp

Rare 1943 Lumitone Radio Lamp

I stumbled across one of these while I was cruising eBay. I had never heard of these before and was fascinated by the design and the idea of it. For the next few months I searched for them on auction sites and luckily managed to secure two of them for our collection. What’s crazy is one of these lamps was produced in 1943, that’s only 2 years after the Pearl Harbor attacks (the other lamp has no info on the bottom). With World War 2 occurring, did that influence the style of these lamps? Who knows, but they are cool!

The ones I ended up purchasing had different bases. One was cream like the body color and the other was a gold color.

These are in found condition and I plan to restore the cases and make them both have the gold bottoms.

The shades I put on these units are not original. The original shades were kind of lame and to me did not compliment the lamps. I’m not sure what lamps these came off of (maybe Majestic), but I like the look they give these Lumitone lamps. They look more Atomic.

It’s crazy how expensive things become over time. It’s cool to see ads with the original price.

The all cream Lumitone unit had all its tags on the bottom. The other one seems to be missing all that info.

With us moving to Texas in the next few months, I plan to create a music/audiophile room. These are the perfect pieces to compliment that set up.

Bo-Low Leopard Lamp Restoration

bolow

Mel and I picked up this Bo-Low lamp sometime back. We had been admiring it for a while at a local antique shop and were finally able to acquire it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out anything about the Bo-Low Lamp Co.

IMG_5955

As you can see, it looks like it traveled around a bit. It also had a chunk of chalk missing from a part of the top of the tree.

IMG_5957

I used my usual process to repair it.

IMG_6727

The next step was to paint the whole cat a cream color to help even out it’s finish, and so that the new color would take better.

IMG_6732

I then applied the main undercoat.

IMG_6717

As you can see from this photo, this cat had no real detail and was almost a cream color.

IMG_6739

Here is the same head shot after I added detail and color.

IMG_6736

Painting the leopard spots are fairly simple. Just make misshapen marks like I did above.

IMG_6737

The next step is to apply a small amount of black around parts of the brown to create the tradition leopard spot.

IMG_5958

Here is the original.

IMG_6745

Here it is after I refinished it.

IMG_6742

The original base was just tan so I added a grass effect to the bottom so it would tie in with its awesome shade.

IMG_6740

It’s coming along as you can see, just the tail left to complete.

IMG_6741

Just adding some finishing touches.

IMG_6743

Ta Da! Here it is all done!

IMG_6751

We have had this shade sitting around for sometime, and this seems like the perfect shade for this lamp.

IMG_6746

I am very happy with how it turned out.

IMG_6753

%d bloggers like this: