THE OIL LAMP GLOW OF MARCH - THE MERGING OF OLD AND NEW REALITIES

A former girlfriend’s father introduced me to vintage oil lamps. I was nineteen, at the time, and I was enthralled by Gord Smith’s (Algor Cottages / Lake Muskoka) diverse interest in antiques. He was a terrific furniture restorer, and a perfectionist in every way. The only time he got mad at me in five years, dating his daughter, was when I pointed out a brush hair left in the varnish, on an otherwise magnificently refinished oak table-top. It wasn’t my fault it was there,.... just my fault for upsetting his complete satisfaction for the piece. He knew it would leave of terrible mark in the surface if he dug it out. The last I remember, he had decided to leave it as provenance of modern era restoration. I’d told him that it wasn’t uncommon, and actually quite desirable, to find a brush hair on a fine work of art.....left by say A.Y. Jackson or Tom Thomson.

He would take a beaten-up dining room table with chairs, that you’d swear had no future whatsoever, and Gord would dismantle the pieces, strip them of the old paint, and rebuild them as they had been originally crafted. You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the new piece, when it arrived, via a horse-drawn delivery wagon in the 1890's, and its restored condition circa the late 1970's. He was that good. The furniture came out of his workshop ready for another hundred year haul. I do believe it was Gord who inspired me most, to start refinishing pieces myself, and while I don’t restore with the same vigor and volume of my youth, I still love to find a challenging piece to work on. I never quite attained Gord’s skill.

Gord had a particular fascination for vintage oil lamps. He never really explained why, but it was a real treat when he fired up the dozen or so he had positioned on a Victorian table in the livingroom. There were some fancy, colored lamps, with elaborate shades but most were examples of farm and utility oil lamps that I think must have reminded him of his own days on a homestead near Bracebridge. The smell of those ignited oil lamps did something to me, and when they were aglow, I was in a writer’s paradise. When Gail would be helping her mother in the kitchen, after dinner, I’d sit there and make copious notes about all kinds of things. One of the notes must have read something like, “Must start my own old lamp collection.” I did.

My first acquisition was a finger lamp.....a tiny wee thing with a wire collar that created a finger loop, that allowed it to be carried from room to room. I purchased it from a landlady in Toronto, and for the balance of that school year, I ignited the lamp every evening. When Gail and I went to an estate auction, in Bracebridge, I was able to buy a large clear glass farm lamp....that’s what Gord called it, and for years it was kept on my writing desk. As I worked on my vintage Underwood, clacking away the night, the illumination was the soft glow from these two wonderful oil lamps. Possibly not so pleasant for some folks, but I adored the scent of burning lamp oil. It was my modest form of historical actuality, and how fitting it was to be working on some history project, tapping away at an early century manual typewriter, with the assistance of such historic lighting.

The Smith family introduced me, to not only the amazing ambience of historic lighting but the joy of collecting antiques generally. Gail and I attended many auctions and hundreds of antique shops looking for interesting pieces. I opened my first antique business, as a family partnership in the fall of 1977, only months after graduating York University. Yes, with a degree in Canadian history. I moved on from that business, leaving it to my parents, and opened a new antique enterprise in the late 1980's, with my wife Suzanne, today known as Birch Hollow Antiques. Suzanne has been a huge motivating force in the business, with her interest in vintage fabrics, particularly wool blankets from Hudson’s Bay to locally produced Bird’s Woollen Mill bedding. She is an expert knitter and uses vintage wool, we find out on the hustings, and from estates, to produce great winter socks and mitts. She sells them at our sons’ music store on Muskoka Road, here in Gravenhurst. And yes, while she’s knitting away, there’ll be an oil lamp glowing beside.

Every fall I stock up on lamp oil for the winter season, just in case there’s a power shortage. Until I recently acquired a large camp stove for emergency heat, I could employ about thirty old oil lamps to heat Birch Hollow for about a week. In March, with lesser concern about power outages, and to keep a fresh stock of oil in reserve, I use-up the oldest of the coal oil, to burn in a half dozen lamps on the harvest table. The heat that builds up shuts off the baseboard heaters for most of the night. As coal oil prices have risen, the cost savings isn’t huge but the ambience of the golden light is worth a lot more. I think about Gord and the Smith family when I ignite these attractive glass lamps, and I certainly benefit from the inspiration they provide. I can sit here long into the evening making notes in my journal, feeling so much closer to the history I’m usually writing about. There’s nothing like a flame glow to enhance the patina of old pine and cranberry glass around them. It’s my night at the museum you might say.

To hear Suzanne clicking and clacking those knitting needles, and see her silhouette in the lamplight, is to feel honestly and pleasantly connected to the history of Muskoka. It’s what her grandmother and great grandmothers used to do at their Ufford farmstead, from the 1860's onward. She’s carrying on a Shea, Veitch and Stripp family tradition.

Whenever I come upon a neat old oil lamp, at an auction or yard sale, at a second hand shop or church fundraiser, I can’t resist adding it to my collection. The rule is, I must restore it immediately, get a new burner if needed, a new shade, or wick and provide a good cleaning of the font and exterior. Suzanne hates dirty lamps. I will get it topped up with oil, and for the next two weeks or so, it is our main working lamp. If I really like it, well, there’s a good chance it could get a year’s run in the annual lamp rotation. I’ve got about forty lamps now. I have sold a few off over the years to collectors. I’m not enthralled by fancy or colored glass lamps, as I very much prefer the utility lamps that were used in pioneer cabins and farmhouses. I often sell off the better quality lamps instead of my old standbys that can provide light and heat in the brightness and volume I need. Nothing fancy about it!

Using vintage oil lamps requires great attention and maintenance. I never leave the room when they are ignited. I have had flare-ups occasionally, from an air space developing between the wick and the tin sleeve of the burner, allowing the flame too much available fuel from the font. It will break the chimney glass, so you need to be on top of it as quickly as possible, to prevent a serious fire. A lot of pioneer dwellings were lost as a result of lighting misadventures.

To welcome in the spring, I will ignite several oil lamps this evening. It’s a March tradition here at Birch Hollow. Suzanne will complain initially about the smell, move a litter further from the harvest table because of it, and the heat it produces, and warn me throughout the evening to watch the flames. Just as I’m sure husband and wife interacted about the same issues, in those Muskoka homestead cabins of yore. I love my oil lamps. I love my wife.

Thanks Gord for giving me my start with antiques and historic lighting.