Collectors Still Grooving Out to Lava Lamps by Linda Rosenkrantz on Creators.com

Recently

FDR'S Fala and the Fad for Scotties There has been any number of well-known presidential pooches in modern history, including Richard Nixon's infamous spaniel, Checkers; LBJ's beagles, Him and Her; Gerald Ford's golden retriever, Liberty (much spoofed by Chevy Chase in the early days …Read more. The Yo-Yo Story The yo-yo, like many other things, has been around for so long that we tend to take it completely for granted, not thinking about how it originated or, for that matter, how it got its distinctive name. But now that the yo-yo is becoming something of …Read more. Recollecting and Collecting Mutt and Jeff Even today, more than a century after they entered the realm of popular culture, this comic-strip team's name is part of the common vernacular — put a tall guy and a short guy next to each other and they'll almost inevitably still be called …Read more. For Collectors, the Milkman Cometh You may have noticed that glass milk bottles are gradually reappearing on supermarket shelves, bringing them back into the modern era. But for people of a certain age, there is still no sound quite as nostalgic as the clink of milk bottles jangling …Read more.

Collectors Still Grooving Out to Lava Lamps

If anything seems to symbolize '60s d‚cor — especially to those who disdained it when it was introduced — it would have to be the lava lamp, seen as a psychedelic symbol of a spacey time when it was groovy just to sit and watch the undulating patterns of your light fixture.

They may still be viewed that way today, but they're also taken semi-seriously by those looking to accessorize retro '50s and '60s d‚cor, and by collectors of mid-century modern furnishings — and new ones are still being manufactured to supplement that market.

Animated motion lamps, as they're known to the trade, are not strictly speaking a phenomenon of the '60s, having origins dating back to the 1920s.

The earliest manufacturer is believed to have been a Chicago firm called Scene-in-Action Corp., which, under the direction of Albert Sabath, went into production in 1926. Their prototypical lamps consisted of a glass cylinder with a scene painted on the outside and two isinglass cylinders inside, one of which revolved to afford motion to the scene.

Of the 13 or more different designs offered by the company, the most well known are Forest Fire, Niagara Falls and the now-rare aquarium lamp, the base of which featured an underwater scene complete with swimming fish.

One of the most prolific manufacturers of this genre was the Econolite Corp., which flourished from 1946 to 1962, producing some of the best-quality lithographs the style has ever seen. At first, they aimed strictly for the juvenile market, with revolving Mother Goose characters, carousels and trains. These were followed by the ubiquitous Niagara Falls, flickering forest fires and a slightly risque Fountain of Youth, all made of plastic. One of the later subjects was Hopalong Cassidy, which became a popular favorite.

The '50s saw the introduction of a number of hybrid forms, such as mermaid clocks with animated motion insets and other clocks with floating fish in their bases; advertising lamps (Motorola, Cooks Ale, etc.) and revolving Christmas trees.

In the '60s, a firm called Optical Effects launched a line of swirling abstractions, clearly influenced by the pop art and psychedelic movements.

Which leads us back to the lava lamp, a genre all its own, whose invention is credited to a Singapore-born British Royal Air Force squadron leader named Edward Craven Walker, whose company, Crestworth, was based in Dorset. Inspired by a homemade lamp fashioned from a cocktail shaker, bar glasses and oil that he saw in a pub in the late 1940s, Walker then spent more than 10 years perfecting his design, which is related to an earlier patent by David George Smith, and which he called Astro.

How does it work? The lamp contains a standard incandescent or halogen bulb, which heats a tall, hurricane lamp-shaped glass bottle containing a multicolored solution of water, plus a mix of wax and carbon tetrachloride. When heated, the wax, which expands more than water when warm, becomes fluid, its specific gravity decreases, and blobs of the colored wax rise to the top of the device and then descend as they cool, giving the impression of bubbling swirls of "lava."

In 1965, Walker sold the U.S. rights to two American entrepreneurs, Adolph Wertheimer and William M. Rubenstein, who marketed it under the name Lava Lite — the first time the term "lava" was used for the lamp. By the mid-1970s, it had become an icon of the psychedelic age, selling about 7 million units per year. And though the fad passed, the lava lamp never went out of production, still a glowing, mesmerizing staple of some teenagers' rooms and an appropriate — if kitschy — accessory for mid-century modern living rooms.

Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, most recently "Beyond Ava & Aidan: The Enlightened Guide to Naming your Baby" (St. Martin's Press). Visit her baby names website at http://nameberry.com. She cannot answer letters personally. To find out more about Linda Rosenkrantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.