{"id":816,"date":"2025-03-15T16:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/?p=816"},"modified":"2025-03-15T16:24:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T20:24:40","slug":"crusie-oil-lamp-c-1750","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/crusie-oil-lamp-c-1750\/","title":{"rendered":"Crusie Oil Lamp (c. 1750)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"655\" src=\"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-1024x655.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-819\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-1024x655.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-300x192.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-768x491.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-1536x982.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_7502-2048x1310.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of the appeal of antique books to me is that they are artifacts of history, with a connection to people and events of past centuries.  So, I also occasionally collect artifacts that help provide more context around books.  For example &#8212; electric lighting wasn&#8217;t invented until the late 1800s and wasn&#8217;t pervasive until the early 1900s, so what would someone in colonial America use for lighting when reading a book in the 1700s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Candles at the time were expensive, so would only have been used by wealthy households.  An average family would instead use an oil lamp, and this example is a specific type known as a Crusie lamp, which was popular in the 1600s through 1700s.  This specific example is most likely from the mid-1700s.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crusie lamps were very primitive lighting devices.  This example is made of hand-wrought iron, with a bowl and spout.  Oil would go into the bowl, which might be fish or whale oil.  A wick would be laid in the spout, and lit to provide light at the end.  The lamp would most commonly be hung from a mantle or wall.  Crusie lamps were often used in pairs, with one suspended just below the other in order to catch oil drips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the late 1700s, Crusie lamps had been replaced with Betty lamps, which look very similar but added a cover and a wick holder, to prevent drips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when you hold a book from the 1700s, it&#8217;s quite likely that its original owner would have used a lamp such as this when reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sharonlathanauthor.com\/crusie-betty-lamp\/\" title=\"\">Crusie lamp and Betty lamp<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes: Part of the appeal of antique books to me is that they are artifacts of history, with a connection to people and events of past centuries. So, I also occasionally collect artifacts that help provide more context around books. For example &#8212; electric lighting wasn&#8217;t invented until the late 1800s and wasn&#8217;t pervasive until [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}