Literature and Sources

One of the greatest desires of a collector is to know as much as possible about his field of collecting. The more he knows, the better he can assess the value of his collectibles, date them and estimate their cultural and historical significance. Knowing more gives you a better chance of finding rare specimens, enables you to distinguish between complete and incomplete pieces, and helps you to repair damaged pieces. For me, studying the literature on my collecting fields is at the same time a highly satisfying intellectual activity that congenially complements my passion for collecting.

As a passionate book collector, I naturally had to track down and buy all available books on old lamps. The language was of secondary importance to me. I understand English quite well, French at least to the extent that I can understand the meaning of a sentence if it is not too literarily ambitious. Beautiful lamp photos inspire me beyond measure. That's why I also value books that have little (or no) connection to my own field of collecting, but have first-class images. From this point of view, the list of my books on lamps in this website is quite small with 24 copies, but it shows the most beautiful of the books that are currently still to be found and are of recent date, so that their information content is not yet outdated.

In our internet age, websites are emerging as an increasingly important source of information. Their abundance and quality of images is not yet quite on a par with well-made books, but one day they will skim over them, as fewer books will probably get the chance to be printed and published due to the decreasing number of book buyers and book readers (I sincerely hope that this prediction of mine turns out to be completely wrong). In a second sub-chapter, I have tried to compile the websites that I think are important for lamp collectors with a focus on salon and table lamps. Some of these websites are in German and in English, some in another language. I assume that many of the lamp collectors in the world can use these websites for their benefit.

Finally, some internet addresses for obtaining spare parts and also some museums with noteworthy lamp collections are mentioned.

It is understandable that especially internet sites can change with time (this is after all their real strength compared to printed books). They may even be deleted altogether. If changes of this kind occur, I will endeavour to update my information accordingly.