Carol's CasaBe it ever so humble … home sweet home

What are period tin sconces? Why would any­one want to use period tin sconces? Well period tin sconces are light­ing devices designed as to remind you of and recre­ate cer­tain peri­ods in his­tory. Thus, if you intend to cre­ate your own his­toric cor­ner in the house, or if you want to live sur­rounded by the old air of his­toric and heroic deeds, you can find stores or artists that cre­ate and sell period tin sconces that meet these very features.

One very famous com­pany which pro­duces and sells period tin sconces, is Period Light­ing Fix­tures, Inc.which is known to have started in 1974. This com­pany as well as oth­ers whose object is rep­re­sented by period tin sconces, have done a lot of research for early light­ing designs and styles, which took them to the Smith­son­ian Insti­tute, the His­toric Amer­i­can Build­ings Sur­vey, the index of Amer­i­can Design in Wash­ing­ton DC or other national muse­ums and his­tor­i­cal land­marks, or preser­va­tion societies.

Most of the period tin sconces are entirely hand made, start­ing with the drip on the wax coated can­dle cov­ers and end­ing with the hand-forged sus­pen­sion hook that hides the wire. The fix­tures are made with many of the same hand tools of the ini­tial producers/craftsmen who were intent upon invest­ing their skills and artistry in a pro­duct­the qual­ity of which approached the outer lim­its of com­mer­cial prac­ti­cal­ity. The period tin sconces avail­able nowa­days, that are actu­ally pro­duced at present, are either meant for hold­ing can­dles or elec­tri­fied. With very few excep­tions, the wires in the elec­tri­fied period tin sconces can never be seen.

Usu­ally, as the name says, period tin sconces are made of cop­per entirely and they are sol­dered. There are sev­eral dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for fin­ishes: hand rub­ber pewter, which cre­ates a dull medium to dark grey plated fin­ish, aged tin, which turns the medium to dark rusted earth tones with dis­tressed tin high­lights beneath a dull oil fin­ish, or other fix­tures get painted with hand for­mu­lated col­lors which then are topped by an amber paste glaze. In any case, the results, the period tin sconces, are incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and resem­bling and remind­ing of the old times when they were used on a reg­u­lar basis.

As for the shapes and styles of period tin sconces that exis­terd in the past, we know they were numer­ous and dif­fer­ent from one age to another.The vari­a­tion in form was due to the imag­i­na­tion of the mak­ers as well as to the fash­ionof the times. Period tin sconces were often used in pairs to sat­isfy the early taste for sym­me­try in inte­rior design. Nowa­days you can either stick to the sym­me­try type of arrange­ment used in the past or to cre­ate your own arrange­ment, depend­ing on your imag­i­na­tion and the items that exist in the rooms that will house your period tin sconces. Gen­er­ally the period tin sconces are cir­cu­lar with bracket arms, or they are oval or rectangular.