An Oil Lamp of my Very Own

This is an ancient sorta lamp right here. atrb ranil

I wrote a blog over on Word Wenches about lighting sources in 1800, me talking about the technology that allowed you to find your way about in a gloomy world.  My take on The Enlightenment, as it were.

In the process of this, I came up with some information on how oil lamps work.  I had not given they mysteries of oil lamps a great deal of thought in all the long and busy years of my life, but from time to time I had wondered why the wick doesn't burn up.  All that fire, y'know.


Turns out the wick is merely an agent to 'wick' liquid to the fire.  The flammable liquid gets drawn up near the fire and vaporizes from the heat thereof and the vapor burns.  The flame is located actually a bit above the wick when everything is going well.   The wick gets charred from the proximity of the flame, but it doesn't provide the fuel of the flame, just a convenient perch for it.
Oil lamps were discovered independently all over the world, from Eskimo igloos to the deserts of Arabia, from Mayan hill villages to the plains of central China --
(unless you are of the school of thought that figures our ancestors were too stupid to figure out astronomy and agriculture all on their own and it was handed down by aliens, in which case I would very much like some of them to drop by and do my taxes for me, thank you,) --
all of which is very clever of people since I would not have thought this oil lamp stuff up myself.  

Step Two: Adding yer olive oil

An oil lamp consists of oil, something to hold the oil, which may or may not be covered to help deal with the spillage issue, and a length of some burnable cloth thingum that is the wick.

Being of an inquiring mind, I set out to create an oil lamp.  That's what all those pictures along the side are: me reverse-engineering primitive lamp.

Step One:  I took one of my spoon rests -- this one is from a Polish pottery.  It has traditional decorations, but I kinda doubt the spoonrest part is traditional.  And it had a promising shape.

Step Three:  The shoelace

Cutting that to length

Step Two:  I sacrificed some of my salad oil.  For you home gamers, this was extra virgin salad oil.  (In my house, even the condiments are virtuous.)

Step Three:   Lamp wicks, by 1800, were braided.  Dunnoh why 'zackly but this evidently helps them do their wicking thing.  So I figgered a shoelace would work.  Use cotton, is my advice.  I don't say that something polyesterish won't work, but I can almost guarantee it is not authentic to 1800.

Step Four: Soak the lace for a bit

Pull the wick up

Step Four:  Let your wick soak up some oil,











and then light it.

 The moment of truth

Step Five:  Voila.  You have your ancient oil lamp, not all that dissimilar to the ones that burnt over the desk of Homer or Voltaire, Murasaki Shikibu or Da Vinci.

I was, frankly, amazed that this worked.

And it burns the wick some

It flares up at first

Once it gets going, it burns with a nice steady flame and just about no smoke.  No odor at all.  Very clean and useful.

Then it settles down to a nice steady light