Vintage Lamp Finds New Home

I'd been shopping for a new lamp for the living room for awhile. You'd think I'd get right on that since I love old lamps so much. It's good that I take my time; if left unchecked I'd have dozens of lamps sitting around every room, the neighbors would talk, and I'd begin muttering to myself in the slightly unnerving over-brightness.

The house has no overhead lighting in the living room (which is a good thing, I think. I dislike homes that are lit up like a corporate office). In the living room I have a brown leather sofa with two end tables. One of the end tables is low and so is able to hold one of those big, curvaceous lamps from the 1960s. The other end table, which is older and more upright, looked ridiculous and completely out of proportion with a tall table lamp sitting on it:

I dusted. Just for you.

It's a 1940s era two-tier end table; like I said it's higher and more upright than the lower, more horizontal looking tables that came later.

So, I placed my other big lamp on the buffet near an adjoining wall (to the right of the above photo):

That's new fabric covering the lampshade. If I ever decide to put such a busy and very directional fabric on an angled lampshade again, please slap me repeatedly until I come to my senses. While I like the end result, the afternoon of spray adhesive, cutting paper patterns, and hot-gluing edges was definitely for a woman with a sturdier psychological profile than mine.

Anyway, the lamp on the buffet ends up being a good 6 feet from where the sofa/end table combo stands, and while it lights up the room, it's a bit far away for me when I'm reading. I needed to find a lamp that was small, so it wouldn't end up competing for visual space with the nearby larger lamp, and so it would fit comfortably on the small upper tier of the coffee table.

After months, I found what I was looking for on Etsy. Ta-DAH!

 It's a perfect size at only 6 inches tall and perhaps a little over 8 inches wide. The little decorative ring at the bulb socket is a type of plastic, maybe celluloid, and with chippy gold paint. The design is the the same on both sides, and it's unmarked. I'm guessing anywhere from 1940s to 1950s for this lamp. The other two lamps in the room are definitely from the 60s, so you can tell I like mixing it up when it comes to the Mid-century decades.

To make it even better, I found a shade at Target that while just a teeny bit too big, mimics the shape and proportion of the lamp perfectly. You can find the link to the shade here, and take a look. Here it is in its new habitat:

In real life, this table holds a stack of books/magazines, a coffee cup, and a coaster made by a first grader.

Not bad. It's too tidy white-y for this lamp, so I need to cover it with fabric (shudder) or paper that would be in the brown/ivory/green/wood tone scheme of the living room. I'm thinking natural linen-type fabric. If I could find fabric or paper that was reminiscent of the fiberglass shades, that would also be a possibility.

Now, what other horizontal surface in my home needs a lamp? Hmmmmmm.......