Lamp Love: An Orphan Finds a Home

This week's Lamp Love is about learning to love something that is bestowed upon you rather than chosen. Namely, this lamp:

Picture this in a room with avocado green flocked wallpaper. Go on, I dare you. 

This lamp belonged to my Great Aunt Elizabeth, who, god rest her soul, was smart as a new suit but didn't know much about decor. Or at least, not enough to know that this lamp was a bad idea. I have no idea when it came into her life, but I'm judging the late 1950s to the early 1960s; it stayed with her, a permanent fixture of Aunt E.'s living room, until it came to me. I'm not sure how I ended up with it, but I think it was mainly because no one else would claim it. That's okay. I like it now.

I like it mostly because it's just such a perfect example of what was going on in lamps mid-century, where more+too much=better. This thing has got a brass base and speckled ceramics and that oval, scalloped design thingy on the side, and some metal trim and the curlicues, which I presume you could hang crystals on if you really wanted to put on the dog.

The shade has become my favoritest lamp thing ever, because I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere else:

It's not just the beautiful weave of the shade fabric, but metal and plastic ornamentation attached. It's like over at the lamp factory they decided to tchotschke the tchotchkes, and out came this beauty.

I've had the lamp for a few years, and dragged it around, never quite knowing where to put it. I think part of the problem in growing to love it was its overwhelming beige-ness, which is hard to place in a household full of color.

The front room turned out to be just the place for it. It provides a nice, light contrast to all the wood paneling in the room, and the dark wood makes the unique fabric of the shade stand out to notice. It's sitting on a wood stool so that the shade doesn't severely overhang my small work desk, and it seems like it has found a home. It's like the slightly crazy relative you never know where to seat at the Thanksgiving table. Proper positioning is essential. I think I've found it with this one.