What is the most common type of antique lantern?

A French hall lantern, gilded or brass, with three lamp-holders and convex glass panels. "French" shows up in nearly half of all titles and "hall" in about a third. The wording is unusually repetitive. The same title string recurs dozens of times, from the lower middle of the range right up towards the top.

How old are most lanterns listed?

The dated field runs from 1800 to 1940, and nearly 1,300 listings carry a clean year rather than a vague period label. Weight sits firmly in the interwar years: the 1920s and 1930s together account for 967 dated listings. The 1910s and 1900s follow, and the 1940s barely register. Nineteenth-century pieces are recorded partly as a bare "19th Century", which covers a wide bracket, and partly under Victorian and Edwardian labels.

Are lanterns sold in pairs?

Often. Three hundred titles offer two, and a handful offer sets of three, so pairs count as a genuine sub-form rather than an occasional bonus. Pairs and sets sit well above comparable singles in the range.

Which makers are found on antique lanterns?

None that the archive can stand behind. No maker or manufacturer name appears often enough across dealers to support an attribution, and lanterns here are described by metal, finish, light count and glass instead. That is why titles read as specifications rather than signatures.

Do lanterns come rewired?

Some listings say so. Around 130 titles state that the fitting has had new flex, and a few of those add that it has been PAT tested. The great majority say nothing on the subject, so rewiring is a stated feature in a minority of listings rather than a general condition of the category.

What unusual lanterns turn up?

Odd things surface among the sampled titles: an Arts and Crafts hand-stitched leather and vellum lantern, a cast-iron bat lantern, a giltwood Italian lantern and a Chinese hardwood lantern stand. Origins outside France and England appear only occasionally, among them Italian, Dutch, Moroccan, North African, Japanese, Scottish, American and Amsterdam School examples. At the very top of the recorded range sits a Regency gilt brass hall lantern with a St Helena provenance claim, an order of magnitude above everything else.

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Antique Lanterns

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A glazed lantern is a metal frame holding glass panels, built to shelter a flame from draught and now wired for electricity, hung in halls, stairwells and porches.