Antique Standard Lamps
A standard lamp is a free-standing floor light on a tall column and spreading or tripod base, made to stand beside a chair and carry a shade at head height.
Antique Standard Lamps
The form came into general use from the mid-nineteenth century, when oil and later gas and electric fittings were mounted on tall adjustable columns to light a reader's chair rather than the ceiling. Electrification from the 1880s made it an ordinary piece of household furniture, and a good many earlier oil lamps were converted to run off the mains.
The one you are most likely to meet has a brass column of roughly 1890 to 1914, catalogued as Victorian or Edwardian, often on a classical column and often built to raise and lower. Brass is in 500 of 1,180 listings on Sellingantiques, more than any other word after the name of the object. Corinthian columns account for a large slice of those. Adjustable, telescopic and extending between them run to over two hundred titles, with rise-and-fall recurring alongside.
Turned and carved wooden columns are the other half of the field: oak, mahogany and walnut lead, with barley twist stems recurring through the Edwardian and 1920s examples, and giltwood and gilt at the decorative end. Smaller groups sit beside them. Chinoiserie is a sizeable population at 101 titles, painted over black, red, green, blue, cream and ivory lacquer grounds. Art Deco and Art Nouveau together make roughly one in ten, including chrome uplighters. Arts and Crafts oak-and-brass lamps are a smaller strand again.
Dates run from 1800 to 1960, but the weight is interwar: the 1920s and 1930s together outnumber everything Victorian, while the 1870s and 1880s are thin. Around a quarter of the archive carries a period name in place of a year, with Edwardian, Victorian and 19th Century all used as buckets. About 121 are listed a year, and 167 different dealers have carried one.
Where The Range Sits
Material does most of the sorting. Onyx, marble, champlevé, ormolu and gilt bronze cluster at the upper end of the sampled range; plain oak, pine and mahogany columns sit at the bottom. A mahogany column set with porcelain plaques reaches near the very top, which tells you how much the surface counts against the shape.
Mechanism pushes a lamp up. Adjustable, telescopic, extending and rise-and-fall brass columns run consistently higher than fixed wooden stems, and scale works the same way: large, tall, monumental and impressive appear only in the upper half of the titles. Pairs are commoner than you would guess at 89 titles, and they sit markedly above singles, with one set of three Edwardian lamps recorded.
Decorative work is the other axis. Carved, giltwood and painted titles climb, and the figural, dragon-carved and Indian inlaid examples reach well up; plain turned stems stay lowest. Where a workshop is named in the title rather than left to a plain description, the lamp sits above the median.
Antique Standard Lamps Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for standard 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.
Among the one-offs to pass through: a Tibetan ceremonial copper horn converted to a lamp, an L.M.S. train lamp and a Bleriot searchlight.
Hinks
The Antique Standard Lamps Glossary
- Standard lamp / lamp standard
- A floor-standing lamp on a tall column. Both word orders appear in titles for the same thing, and 166 listings use floor lamp instead, the dominant term in current stock.
- Telescopic
- A column that slides within itself to change height, in 80 titles. Rise and fall means the same sort of thing and turns up mostly on brass columns.
- Corinthian column
- A fluted classical column with an acanthus capital. It appears in 58 titles, 43 of them brass, and is the single commonest column type in the archive.
- Barley twist
- A spiral-turned wooden stem, most often oak, common in the Edwardian and 1920s wooden lamps.
- Japanned
- A hard coloured varnish imitating oriental lacquer, seen on several Edwardian lamps alongside the larger chinoiserie group.
- Torchère / uplighter
- A standing light that throws its light upward, in a handful of Art Deco chrome examples.
Antique Standard Lamps: Frequently Asked Questions
Are antique standard lamps mostly Victorian?
No. The dated listings run 1800 to 1960, and the two heaviest decades by a wide margin are the 1920s and 1930s, which together outnumber everything Victorian.
Only seven listings are dated to the 1870s and twenty-eight to the 1880s, so anything credibly mid-Victorian is the thin end of the archive. Victorian and Edwardian also get used as era labels in place of a year.
What are they usually made of?
Brass, more than anything else. It appears in 500 of 1,180 titles, often on a classical column, and copper, iron and cast metal make up a smaller metal group alongside it.
Wood is the other half of the field, led by oak, mahogany and walnut, with barley twist stems recurring and carved and giltwood columns at the decorative end.
Do standard lamps adjust in height?
Many of the metal ones do. Adjustable appears in 104 titles, telescopic in 80 and extending in 35, with rise and fall recurring alongside them.
The mechanism is close to a defining feature of the brass examples. Wooden columns are more often fixed.
What is a chinoiserie standard lamp?
One decorated in a Chinese taste by a European hand, usually painted over lacquer. Grounds recorded include black, red, green, blue, cream and ivory.
It is a sizeable sub-population at 101 titles, about one in twelve, with a run of Edwardian examples and some described as japanned.
Were any converted from oil lamps?
Yes. Fifty-eight titles still describe the lamp as an oil lamp, including paraffin and Aladdin examples, and several are openly labelled as conversions.
The form grew out of oil and gas fittings on tall columns, so conversion was the ordinary route once houses were wired. Cast-iron gas candelabra and ecclesiastical candlesticks turned into standards appear too.
How often do pairs come up?
More often than you would expect. Pair appears in 89 titles, and pairs sit markedly higher in the sampled range than single lamps.
One listing offers a set of three Edwardian lamps.