Antique Handel Lamps

For most 19th-century Americans, the year 1876 was noteworthy for marking the centennial of their young nation, which was struggling to implement the policies of the Reconstruction Era after the previous decade’s bloody, yet largely unresolved, Civil War. Against this troubled backdrop, a celebratory Centennial Exposition was held in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed 100 years earlier. The exposition offered visitors all sorts of world’s-fair-style souvenirs and illuminating exhibits of exciting new technologies, including Alexander Graham Bell’s latest invention, the telephone. Literally illuminating were two other creations of 1876—the glass lamp shades produced by a pair of entrepreneurial designers, Philip Julius Handel of Connecticut and Louis Comfort Tiffany of New York. Using kerosene as their fuel, these early oil lamps were the precursors to the stained-glass lamps Tiffany would become best known for, as well as the reverse-painted lamp shades that became synonymous with the Handel name. From the beginning, and unlike Tiffany, the Handel Lamp Company had little interest in lamp bases. Instead, Handel offered its customers a range of third-party bases to choose from, including ceramic bases made by Rookwood, and the company even made shades to fit a customer’s existing base. It wasn’t until 1902 that Handel began making zinc alloy and bronze lamp bases of its own, which were marked with the “Handel Lamp Company” name. The overlapping aesthetics of Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts informed the look of Handel’s lamp shades and bases. In addition to its trademark reverse-painted shades, which were given added three-dimensionality thanks to their “chipped ice” exterior finishes, the company also made Tiffany-style leaded shades, which were considered the aesthetic equivalents of real Tiffany shades but at a lower cost. By 1906, the company introduced its popular Teroca line of shades, which were made of slag glass overlaid by metal. Some of these metal patterns were geometric, as in the repeated rectangles of design number 5059, but many more vintage Handel slag-glass lamp shades paired sunset-colored slag glass with metal overlays of palm trees, as seen in design numbers 5066, 5409, and others. Beginning in 1910, the words “HANDEL Lamps” and “PAT’D NO. 979664” were stamped into the metal rims that supported the company’s lamp shades. Then, in 1914, after Handel died, Handel’s second wife, Fannie Hirschfield Handel, ran the company until 1919, when the founder’s cousin, William F. Handel, took the reins. That was also the year when Joseph Palme was hired as one the company’s many talented designers, joining Albert Parlow, William Runge, Peter Broggi, and others. Their skills set the stage for the success of Handel lamps during the 1920s. But two things would kill the Handel Lamp Company. The first, of course, was the Great Depression, which began with the stock-market crash of 1929. But even before the economic downturn, tastes were moving away from Art Nouveau and toward Art Deco, which is one reason why Handel was forced to close its New York City showroom in 1925. By 1936, the Handel company had shuttered itself entirely.