September 2006
Lamp
Tales
Stick
by Stick
It would
take quite a while to eat as many popsicles as there are popsicle sticks
in Betty Bearden’s handmade lamp.
The entire
lamp (except for the electrical components), including the shade, is made
from ornately interlaced popsicle sticks. The six-sided base supports a column
that holds the lamp harp and eight-sided shade.
Bearden,
who lives in Walnut Grove, found the lamp at an antiques flea market in
Snellville. The story is that it was made over 50 years ago by a local pastor
who is still alive and living in Conyers.
“It’s pretty unusual,” says Bearden, “and
I don’t know if there are any more like it. When I saw it, I just had to
have it. Can you imagine the time and work that went into building that lamp?”
Light
it Up
Dan Bennett’s
blowtorch lamp literally lit things up even before it became an electric
lamp.
“We
used the torch to heat a large soldering iron at our home shop in Sherman
(New York). We didn’t have enough of that kind of work to merit a fancy
oxy-acetylene rig,” explains Bennett, a Walton EMC employee.
“It
burned white gas, like Coleman fuel, and the tank had to be pressurized.
The small pan under the head of the torch was filled with the same fuel
and lit to heat the copper head. The torch head had to be hot to vaporize
the gas so it would burn with the proper flame.”
The old blowtorch was somewhat cumbersome and dangerous.
When better torches came along, like ones that use screw-on propane bottles,
the Bennett family quit using it.
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