HEATING AND LIGHTING UTENSILS IN NATIONAL MUSEUM 53 



posas." A box from Burgos, Spain, bears the inscription : " Maripo- 

 sas para tres meses," Mariposas for three months, and has a cork 

 and tin float. (Fig. 4.) (Cat. No. 167058.) Night lights made 

 locally were sold at Burgos. The taper is set in a cork float covered 

 with a disk of paper and are self-floating. (Fig. 3.) A box of 

 Nuremberg night lights having a float of tin cut with three arms 

 tipped with cork is in the collection. (Fig. 6.) The lights are disks 

 of wood with the taper set up in the middle, and are packed in an 

 oval veneer wood box containing tin tweezers for picking up and 

 placing the lights. A Nuremberg box with label bearing the name 

 of the device in four languages and a cut of Christ rising from the 

 dead was bought by Dr. Leonhard Stejneger in Kussia in 1898. 

 (Cat. No. 324738.) A box without identification, probably from 

 Nuremberg, came also from Russia. The float is a square cross with 

 cork at the tips. The lights are disks of paper with tapers. A box 

 of Nuremberg night lights was received from Philadelphia, where 

 they were said to have been used in 1820. (Cat. No. 130310; George 

 G. Fryer, fig. 2.) 



SIMPLE LAMPS 



The simplest lamps, not makeshifts, and definitely used over great 

 culture areas of the world are mere saucers with no footing for the 

 wick, which is brought up to the rim at any place, where it hangs 

 insecurely. This was the universal lamp of China and Japan. It 

 is of very ancient origin, perhaps the most ancient lighting vessel 

 designed by man, at a period of culture when his needs required a 

 house light. Perhaps the original model was a shell of smooth out- 

 line. There were endless hints that the wick should have a groove at 

 least in which to rest, and this step was taken by most of the lamp- 

 using world, as described in the next section. 



Plate 48, Figure 4, is a saucer lamp mounted on a bamboo stand 

 and used formerly in street lighting. Generally the saucer is of 

 pottery, but iron, brass, pewter, and porcelain serve. (Cat. No. 

 175867, China, W. W. Rockhill; 8.3 inches (21 cm.) high.) Figure 

 3 is an example of fine porcelain with blue decoration. The stem 

 arises from a saucer and has a cup support for the shallow saucer 

 lamp. The latter has a small stub handle. (Cat. No. 175863, China, 

 same collector; 7.1 inches (18 cm.) high.) Figure 5 is of brass. The 

 saucer has a handle and rests on a cup at the top of a column arising 

 from a bowl. (Cat. No. 175864, China, same collector; 15.7 inches 

 (40 cm.) high.) An ingenious folding pocket candlestick lamp is 

 shown (pi. 49(7, figs. 2, 3) , joined and ready for use. (Cat. No. 175866, 

 China, same collector; 8 inches (20.5 cm.) high.) An elaborate cast 

 brass hanging lamp from Japan in the collection had for its effective 

 part a simple saucer, and in other Japanese lights the saucer was 



