and another beat up old desk lamp...

NO, sorry, we're not quite done with the 'funky old desk lamps'...here's yet one more. ;-) This poor thing has been laying in pieces in a box for the last 25+yrs, awaiting (mostly) new wiring to replace its original very crispy assortment of cloth/rubber coated stuff. AMAZINGLY, once I finally did that and put it all back together (within the past week or so) then plugged it in again -- the d*mned thing lit right up with the first turn of its switch -- no sparks, no smoke?!! <cheers><applause>

Its fancy decorated cast (pot metal) base is about 7" across and holds its roughly 18" wide lampholder about 15" tall overall. Its original (fine) crinkle-finished dark bronze/brown paint is as battered as the lamp itself but still there, accented with pairs of gold-tone bands across both ends of its top. There are no existing marks to suggest who might have first made it or how old it actually is.

This one's different from the others I've shown (so far) since it has a fluorescent light bulb, itself a vintage VERD-A-RAY tube which actually is the same one that came in this lamp, way back whenever I first got it. I am not convinced that the small ballast which drives it (within the lamp base) is original but it is obvious that the existing 'bottom cover' of the lamp base is not, it being rather crudely made of masonite pressboard. It seems likely that somebody else sorta kludged that part of it long ago, maybe when its original ballast crapped out and the then-available (now existing) one wouldn't quite fit in there. (??)

Another potentially amusing detail (for me, anyway) is an existing little paper tag still tied to it which seems to suggest that somebody somewhere thought maybe it was worth twenty bucks. I cannot imagine I paid that much for it when I got it (if in fact I paid anything at all for it??) but whatever... <LOL>