Antique Boudoir Lamps
A boudoir lamp is a small electric lamp made for a bedside or dressing table, not for lighting a whole room.
Antique Boudoir Lamps
Small bedside and dressing-table lamps became practical household objects once electric supply spread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name came to cover the compact table lamp for a bedroom or private sitting room, and that is what the heading holds on Sellingantiques: modest table lamps, with a few small floor lamps, a wall light and a chandelier fitting alongside them.
The table lamp dominates. Nearly half the titles say plainly "table", and it runs across the whole price range, from a candelabra-style Edwardian lamp at the bottom to Art Deco wrought iron and nickel higher up. Recurring words are "small" and "little", so these are pieces made to stand on furniture at arm's reach.
Cut glass and crystal is the material named more than any other, twice in the low-domed shape dealers call a mushroom lamp. French Art Deco and Art Nouveau metalwork forms the other cluster: wrought iron, nickel, bronze set with glass cabochons, gilt bronze with porcelain. Brass turns up in a desk lamp, a pressed table lamp and a Victorian pair.
Dates are tight. Sixteen listings carry a clean year, and every one falls between 1900 and 1930, the 1920s being the busiest decade. Four more are given only as "Edwardian", which is a reign rather than a year and should be read as roughly 1901 to 1910. A title's own wording and its dated field can disagree, one lamp being called 1930s Art Deco while dated 1920.
Top And Bottom
Attribution does most of the work. The highest-priced pieces carry a designer or glasshouse name in the title, whether stamped or offered only as an attribution, while the cheaper end carries no name at all. French origin pulls the same way: "French" appears in six titles and clusters in the upper half, and Art Deco or Art Nouveau styling sits with it.
Material sorts the rest. Bronze, nickel and wrought iron rise, particularly worked bronze with gilding or glass cabochons, and the single most expensive lamp in the group is a bronze Art Nouveau piece set with cabochons. Pressed brass and the candelabra-style Edwardian lamp sit at the bottom of the range.
Two smaller things lift a lamp. Most titles say nothing about a shade, so those that specify one, or call a lamp complete, use it as a selling point. Multiples count too: a pair of brass table lamps and a twin-bulb crystal mushroom lamp both sit above single lamps in the same material.
Antique Boudoir Lamps Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for boudoir 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.
Boudoir comes from the French bouder, to sulk. It was the room a lady went to sulk in.
The Antique Boudoir Lamps Glossary
- Boudoir lamp
- A small lamp for a bedroom or private sitting room. On Sellingantiques it is mostly a table lamp, occasionally a small floor or reading lamp.
- Mushroom lamp
- A lamp whose shade forms a low domed cap over the base. Two of the cut-crystal examples are described this way.
- Cut crystal
- Glass decorated by grinding facets into the surface. The most common material named in these titles, sometimes written as cut glass.
- Cabochon
- A domed, unfaceted glass or stone set into metalwork. One bronze lamp is described with glass cabochons.
- Celluloid
- An early plastic. It appears once, on a small Art Deco table lamp, and nowhere else in the group.
- Jugendstil
- The German-language name for Art Nouveau, used on one title alongside Art Deco.
Antique Boudoir Lamps: Frequently Asked Questions
What form do boudoir lamps usually take?
A table lamp. Nearly half the titles say simply "table", and the form appears at every level of the range, in cut crystal, brass, nickel and wrought iron.
Three listings are not table lamps: two small French floor lamps and a reading lamp. Two more are fixed fittings, a bronze and amber frosted glass wall light and a white and cobalt crystal chandelier.
How old are these lamps?
Every clean date in the group falls between 1900 and 1930, a thirty-year window with nothing on either side of it. The 1920s account for the largest number.
Four listings are dated only as "Edwardian", so roughly 1901 to 1910 and no closer. Two carry no date at all, one of them titled Victorian, which sits outside the range the rest occupy.
Which materials come up most often?
Cut glass and crystal, in about a quarter of the titles. Two of those are mushroom lamps, one of them twin bulb.
After that comes metal: wrought iron, nickel, bronze with glass cabochons, gilt bronze with porcelain, and brass in a desk lamp, a pressed table lamp and a Victorian pair. A single lamp is made of celluloid.
Why are French examples priced higher?
"French" appears in six titles and those cluster in the upper half of the range. The two small French floor lamps and the bronze cabochon lamp sit at the top.
Style goes with origin. Art Deco appears in five titles, and the French pieces are where the worked bronze, nickel and wrought iron are found rather than pressed brass.
Do these come up often for sale?
Not often. Around three a year come to market on Sellingantiques.
Fifteen different dealers have listed one, so almost nobody carries two at a time. Twenty-two are live at present.
What does mushroom lamp mean?
It describes the shape of the shade: a low dome sitting over the base like a cap, rather than a tapering or conical shade.
Both lamps called this in the group are cut crystal, and one of them is twin bulb, with two lampholders on a single base.