HK sent me a matched pair of lamps. One, a table lamp. The other a swag chandelier designed in a swirling compilation of many styles to create grandeur that cannot be anything but 1970s. I imagine these lamp’s ‘friends’ that accompanied them in their original 1970 décor home: the carpeted bathroom, avocado green and harvest gold tile counter tops, red linoleum flooring, vertical blinds, popcorn ceilings, huge silk floral arrangements, and Mediterranean kitchen. Prepare yourself because before we know it the 1970s will come back.
Three Separate Strains of 70s Stylistic Trends
- Late hippie plastic colorful décor.
- Artisan handmade objects with naturalistic designs. Think raw looking pottery and tree-hugger furniture.
- Classic overstated middle class glamour.
HK’s table lamp and the matching swag lamp fall into the latter category. They’re vintage cast metal made to look antique. The table lamp comes with a thirty-six inch shaft culminating in a slag glass hexagonal shade of alternating brown and white glass. Called slag, we associate this medium with the Arts and Crafts Period in lighting. We see elements of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque revivals, Louis XV design, a smattering of Italian Baronial—various looks from decorative periods in human history that scream grandeur. The lamps are meant to evoke historical objects, great treasures, which of course they’re not. But they try, which is why I love them. The same 1970s urge that made Liberace’s mansion famous makes these lamps something to smile about.
Mrs. Martorella’s Living Room
I’m reminded of her aspirations of grandeur in Deerfield Illinois where I grew up in the 1970s. She had that white marble coffee table which weighed a thousand pounds. The base was a mix of Baroque angels and Classical Corinthian columns, and other non-period elements painted cream, carved in wood. Or the cheaper medium, plaster? It dominated the red velvet sofa encased in plastic. Illinois gets hot in August so her daughter Debbie and I often stuck to the sofa when we snuck in to admire the setting. I found it so different from my house, decorated in Ethan Allen. None the less Mrs. Martorella chased us out of the living room meant for exclusive guests at cocktail hour.
Mom once went to a cocktail party in that room and gushed over the amounts of silver-plated hostess accoutrements. Mrs. Martorella owned crystal lamp bases with silk shades purchased in 1972. Similar to HK’s pair of lamps, a table lamp sported an ‘antique’ (not really) cast metal base sprayed bright gold topped by a fake Waterford style cut glass shade. To complete the picture, the shaft of the lamp had those little wires supporting a multitude of clear glass crystal drops on a chain. Even the ash trays weighed fifteen pounds and looked Baronial.
HK’s lamps have a multi acanthus leaf design in cast metal painted regal gold then ‘antiqued’ with black paint. The amusing shades, colored glass in six sides of brown and white slag under which we find a six branch candelabra with six small bulbs—for more opulence. Although confused little, the lamps try hard to become BIG LAMPS. If you lived through the 1970s you recognize that a swag chandelier was somewhere close in your neighborhood.
What is this style?
Unfortunately, such sites as Etsy describe HK’s lamps as Hollywood Regency, an incorrect designation. The design term Hollywood Regency gets its inspiration from Hollywood’s golden era, 1920-1950. Influence also comes from the purely geometrical style of the late 1700s Neoclassical period melded with the 1930s Art Deco style, primarily French, also geometric. Hollywood Regency has one element in common with HK’s lamps—a maximalist style. Different from HK’s lamps, true Hollywood Regency enjoyed only the best, most expensive materials. Instead of saying these lamps are Gothic Baronial, or Hollywood Regency, I call this style Middle Class Glamour of the 1970s. HK, there’s a real market for this style because those brass and crystal studded rain drop pole lamps and table lamps of the 1970s are offered for $200 and up, presumably by sellers much younger than me who never heard of Liberace.