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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Lighting / 3 Roman to Byzantine Terracotta Oil Lamps, Holy Land Levant
Near East, Holy Land, Roman to Byzantine period. A trio of hand-sized terracotta lamps, each built on the same ancient logic: a closed reservoir, a central fill hole, a nozzle to carry the wick. The smallest is pale buff clay, its fill hole framed by crisply molded relief geometry, hatched panels, rings, and dotted borders. The mid-size lamp is a bright red-washed body, wheel-formed and hand-finished rather than moldmade, its broad shoulder tapering to a stubby nozzle. The largest carries a band of raised dots around the fill hole and a small tab-shaped lug at the rear for carrying. Fueled with olive oil and a twist of flax wick, lamps of this kind lit houses, shops, and tombs across the Levant, and their sheer abundance makes them the most familiar surviving trace of ancient daily life. Lamp typology is the archaeologist's clock. Because the forms changed quickly, cost little to make, and were discarded in enormous quantities, excavators in the southern Levant date strata by nozzle profile and shoulder ornament with a precision few other ceramics allow. The range visible in this group, from a plain wheel-turned body to two-part mold production with decorated shoulders, tracks the industrialization of lamp making under Roman and later Byzantine rule, when a single workshop could stamp out identical copies by the hundred. Tab-shaped lug handles of the sort seen here are a recurring Levantine feature, practical for lifting a lit lamp without scorching the fingers. Item # 205121
Estimate:$175
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorLighting
Estimate:
$175
GOLVLAMPA, 3-armad, 1900-talets andra hälft.
09/29/2026
$84.92
Est: $150.58
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JOSEF FRANK. TAKLAMPA, BORSTAD METALL, MODELL 2358, FIRMA SVENSKT TENN.
09/29/2026
$1,158.92
Est: $803.14
BORDSLAMPA, 1930-tal. Art Deco. Fot i svart marmorerad sten.
09/29/2026
$320.2
Est: $100.39
