Add Historical Authenticity To Your Home With Gas Lanterns
If you have taken a stroll through historical Charleston, you likely noticed the the flickering flame of gas lanterns that flank the front doors and gates of the antebellum mansions for which Charleston is famous. Gas lanterns came into existence in the 1750s and served a functional purpose of lighting the streets. Workers who cared for the lanterns were called Lamplighters and were responsible for lighting them every evening and extinguished them every morning.
Present day, gas lanterns serve more of an aesthetic purpose than a functional one by giving homes historical authenticity. Homeowners may choose to adorn their premises with copper lanterns to evoke the romantic and historic feel with option to place them adjacent to doors or hang them from ceilings. Gas lanterns can also be mounted on posts, just like gas street lamps of yesteryear, to light gardens and patios.
As home designs have evolved over hundreds of years from the overly ornate and fancy colonial to today’s clean lines of modern architecture, so have the style options for decorative gas lanterns. Home owners and designers now have more than just the classical styles from which to choose. The updated designs mirror the modern homes with clean, minimalist composition but still bestows ambiance and sophistication from previous centuries. Below are a few examples of the clean, modern style options offered today.
The buyer for one of our recently completed projects requested gas lanterns installed on both sides of their front door. They were unsure if they wanted a copper finish or a matte black or somewhere in between so we provided mockups to help them decide. They ended up choosing the antique copper finish in the Yorkshire Flush Mount which gave a matte black appearance from a distance but up close, the copper undertones were visible.
We ordered the lanterns from French Market Lanterns and the buyers chose the Yorkshire Flush Mount option. This particular style is described on the website as “the clean lines of this lantern offer one of the most classic and versatile designs in gas and electric lanterns, this jewel can be found from the streets of Charleston, South Carolina to the historical districts of New Orleans.”
