I was born in Fort Worth and lived here my whole life and never heard of Bangs, Texas. In the 1950s, there was a good deal of interest in anything that had a touch of the exotic.Ī pottery is a big production, if there is a pottery in your town, you know it.
#Mit brass rat with red eye tv#
That struck me as odd, I was so far from believing that a large pottery would have existed that made TV lamps in Texas that it blinded me to the obvious. Occasionally one of those lamps would also have a stamp on the bottom that said Texans Inc. A number of the lamps had a marking on them that said Kron and no one knew what that meant. Many of them are marked by the manufacturer and in most cases it’s a company you’ve never heard of. I got really curious about the different companies that made the lamps. Stevens: As I collected TV lamps I discovered an interest in historical research that I didn’t really know was in me. Collectors Weekly: How did you get interested in this one specific TV lamp manufacturer, Texans Incorporated? There were a small number made in Japan but nothing like what was happening over here. and Canada, as far as the sale of them, and there are collectors only in the U.S. TV lamps were exclusively a North American phenomenon, U.S. I’d say there was pretty much no interest in TV lamps at all in the 1970s. I don’t think I was the only person it inspired. In fact, that book I mentioned, I’ve always credited it with inspiring a lot of people to pay attention to those lamps. I think people probably started collecting TV lamps in the 1980s. Over time TV lamps have grown in popularity. I know, because of my three websites, I get a lot of emails. Collectors Weekly: How many people collect TV lamps? A panther kind of fit in with all that, an exotic animal from a foreign land. So in the 1950s you have people all of a sudden interested in Oriental, Africa, Polynesian, and French motifs, basically anything that represented a foreign culture became very popular. Part of this had to do with an influence from soldiers coming back from World War II. In the 1950s there was a good deal of interest in anything that had a touch of the exotic. I have a theory as to why those were the most popular. And of those, the most popular was a long sleek design of a stalking panther, that looks like it’s crouching low and sneaking up on its prey. Collectors Weekly: What was the most popular TV lamp design? Today the more common TV lamp is worth around 50 to 75 dollars but there are some that are worth hundreds to thousands of dollars. They were originally a dime store item, costing about 5 or 6 to 10 dollars. I started acquiring the lamps as I found them and it just kept growing, now I have somewhere around 300 to 350 lamps. They were made by at least 100 manufacturers, probably many more. I got looking for them in different places and soon realized there were thousands of different TV lamp designs. A TV lamp doesn’t have a shade like a normal lamp, there’s a bulb behind it so it creates a silhouette of whatever the lamp itself is and it’s casting light on the wall behind the TV, so it’s kind of a mood lighting sort of feeling. That the lamp would diffuse the light a little bit and keep people from going blind or whatever they thought would happen. The general consensus was that the concept behind TV lamps was to keep a person from damaging their eyes from watching too much TV. I was just fascinated by them and started doing research. There are figurines styled to look like roosters, panthers, horses, deer, people, plant life, usually ceramic or made of plaster, but most were pottery. They run the gamut from really ugly to really attractive. I was intrigued by the whole phenomenon of TV lamps, these odd and cool looking lamps. I just remember looking at the lamps in the book and thinking how interesting and crazy they were. There were so many in that book that were really tacky. But there was a book called “Turned On: Decorative Lamps of the 50s” written by Leland and Crystal Payton in 1989, about different kinds of lamps from the 1950s. When I was growing up, we didn’t have TV lamps around our house. Old B movies, monster and sci-fi movies, the stuff you can poke fun at a little bit. I’ve always had an interest in the tackier artifacts of the 1950s and ’60s. Based in Fort Worth, Mark can be reached via his website, Texans Incorporated, which is a member of our Hall of Fame. Mark Stevens discusses the history and varieties of collectible 1950s TV (television) lamps.
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