How many oil lamps are listed each year?

About 59 a year on Sellingantiques, and 122 different dealers have offered them. That makes it one of the more widely stocked lighting categories. The archive behind those figures runs to 561 listings, so there's a broad picture of what the category actually holds.

Are these lamps usually still oil burners?

Thirty-two titles state outright that the lamp has been converted to electricity, so an electrified example turns up roughly one time in seventeen. The rest are described without that note. Conversion is common enough to be a standing feature of the category rather than an exception, and dealers tend to say so in the title when it applies.

What does Victorian mean in these titles?

It's a bracket, not a date. Victorian is used 131 times and 19th Century a further 83, which means over a third of the dating covers several decades rather than a year. Where a clean year is given, the 1880s lead with 75 listings, then the 1900s at 65 and the 1890s at 56. The 1860s and 1870s sit behind them, and the 1910s, 1920s and Edwardian labels are thin.

Which colours of glass turn up most?

Pink-red, by a distance. Cranberry appears in 50 titles and ruby in 16, well ahead of blue at 12 and pink at 11. Vaseline, amber, green, opaline and satin glass all recur too, used for fonts and shades alike.

What is a standard lamp in this category?

A floor-standing lamp on a tall stem, built the same way as the table version but scaled up. Standard appears in 56 titles, with extending in 18 and telescopic in 14. They're only about a tenth of the category but occupy most of the top of the range, several of them as matched pairs.

Do unusual forms come up at all?

They do, mostly once each. A Scottish iron cruisie, a Judenstern Sabbath lamp, an Anglo-Burmese padouk and brass adjustable lamp, a South Indian temple bronze, a photographer's lamp, and two lamps fitted with terrestrial globe shades. Railway, ship's and signalling lamps form a small side population, with GWR, LNER and South Eastern Railway examples and port and starboard ship's lamps appearing individually. Genuinely early pieces are marginal: 18th-century whale-oil and crusie lamps appear three or four times in the whole sample.

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Antique Oil Lamps

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A paraffin-burning domestic lamp, usually a brass column carrying a glass font, burner and shade, made to light ordinary British rooms before electricity arrived.