Antique Bankers Lamps
A small adjustable electric desk lamp, usually brass, made to throw light down onto a ledger, letter or reading surface without glaring back at whoever was working.
What Are Bankers Lamps?
The heading is used broadly. Brass appears in three titles in five on Sellingantiques, and "desk" in much the same share, so the lamp you meet is described as a brass desk lamp first and a bankers lamp second. Plain swan-neck and articulated desk lamps sit under the same heading as the classic green-shaded pattern.
Adjustable electric desk lamps arrived with the spread of electric supply in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name comes from their use in banks, offices and libraries, where a low shaded lamp lit the paperwork. Roughly three in five listings are the plain brass adjustable form: weighted base, upright stem, a shade that tilts, swivels or rises and falls.
The dating runs from 1850 to 1930, but the weight sits after the First World War. Of 106 listings with a clean year, 56 fall in the 1920s, with the 1930s next and the 1910s behind them. Edwardian is used as a period label on a further twelve. Only three listings sit before 1900, and those are converted or notary lamps rather than bankers lamps proper.
Around a fifth of the archive is Art Deco and Modernist, often chrome, Bakelite or marble rather than brass. French and Continental lamps take a smaller share, including toleware, notary and piano lamps. The American green cased-glass type turns up in only a handful of titles. Green or enamel shades are named occasionally, so the shade is rarely the selling point.
Where The Range Splits
Movement does most of the work. Articulated lamps, jointed to swing on more than one axis, sit in the upper half of the range wherever they appear. A plain fixed-stem lamp sits at the bottom. Between those two, rise and fall stems and swan necks give a single kind of adjustment and price accordingly.
Material and scale move it further. Silver plate, gilt bronze, painted toleware and marble all show up among the higher-priced titles, while plain brass and Bakelite gather at the cheaper end. Size counts too: titles calling a lamp large or imposing are never among the cheap ones. Pairs are genuinely uncommon, three listings out of 123, and each one sits high.
Shades are the quiet variable. A named original shade, green enamel or opaline, tends to lift a lamp above the plain ones. Rewired and PAT tested appear together in the same seventeen titles, which marks out one group of dealers who test their electrics rather than a quality tier.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for bankers lamps, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Brass carries most bankers lamp titles on Sellingantiques, though copper, chrome, silver plate, gilt bronze, marble, Bakelite and painted tole all turn up too.
The Antique Bankers Lamps Glossary
- Bankers lamp
- Loose trade term for a small adjustable shaded desk lamp. On Sellingantiques it covers brass, chrome and Bakelite examples alike.
- Adjustable
- The shade or arm tilts, turns or raises. Named in seventeen titles, and the single most common way dealers describe how these lamps work.
- Rewired
- Old flex and fittings replaced, in eighteen titles. PAT tested, the portable appliance test on the electrics, appears in seventeen and always alongside rewired.
- Swan neck
- A single curved stem carrying the shade out over the desk. Distinct from rise and fall, where the stem adjusts for height rather than angle.
- Articulated
- A jointed arm giving more than one axis of movement. Four or five titles use it, clustered toward the top of the range.
- Bronzed
- A dark bronze-coloured finish over base metal, as opposed to solid bronze. Three titles. Bakelite, the early moulded plastic used for bases and fittings, appears in another three.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are bankers lamps always brass?
No. Brass dominates, naming three titles in five, but the archive also runs to copper, chrome, silver plate, gilt bronze, marble, Bakelite and painted tole.
The Art Deco and Modernist lamps in particular tend away from brass, using chrome, Bakelite or marble instead.
Do they all have green glass shades?
They don't. Green or enamel shades are named only occasionally in titles, and the American green cased-glass type appears in just three or four listings.
Where a green enamel or opaline shade is named as original, the lamp tends to sit above the plain ones in the range.
What period do most of them date from?
The early twentieth century, and the 1920s above all: 56 of the 106 listings with a clean year fall in that decade.
The 1930s and 1910s follow, with a small number from the 1900s and twelve more labelled Edwardian rather than given a year.
Dealer dates here are estimates. Only one lamp in the archive carries an inscribed date, a pair marked 1916.
How many come up for sale each year?
Around twelve a year across Sellingantiques.
Thirty-three different dealers have listed one at some point, so it's a category spread thinly across many shops rather than held by a few specialists.
Can you find Victorian bankers lamps?
Barely. Only three listings in the archive date before 1900.
Those three are an 1850s oil lamp converted to electricity, a Napoleon III notary lamp of the 1860s, and a French toleware desk lamp recorded simply as nineteenth century. None is a bankers lamp proper.
Which unusual forms turn up under this heading?
The odd ones appear once each: a clam shell lamp, a heart-shaped base, a French piano lamp, a triple bouillotte in green toleware and a Swedish articulated example.
Office and service lamps surface too. Two brass lamps carry General Post Office asset numbers stamped on them, and another is described as British Military issue.