A Bluestocking Knits

Show and Tell Friday is moving to Thursdays — today, it’s our favorite lamp.

This one (please ignore the crummy paint job left by painters who didn’t bother to remove light fixtures before they painted) came from my grandparents’ house,

so I can date it to 1947.  I remember many happy sleepovers, lying on the floor in Grandma’s room and looking up at this lamp before I fell asleep.  When my mother had to sell the house, I asked for this.  One of the first things we did when we moved to our own house, which had been stripped of all the 1929 doorknobs and light fixtures by a previous tenant in a fit of pique, was install this lamp in the bedroom.  It has a certain elegance to it, like a wedding cake with its ring of "piped" dots around the rim and swags of glass and pendants, but it isn’t fussy.  I love the simple grace of it, and it makes me happy to see it in my own house.

These are as yet only lamps to be —

but they are very pretty.  We bought them at Wah Tung in Admiralty, just before we came home from Hong Kong.  Haven’t had a chance to get the fixtures to convert them from the candlesticks they started out as, but I’m looking forward to the finished lamps!  I love the color of the ripe peaches and the dark branches against the taupe background, and the little golden-orange bats (the Chinese words for "bat" and "happiness" are both pronounced "fu"), and the way that they are apparently similar but actually just a little bit different from each other.