Lampblack

“ At one locality where petroleum is used for lighting purposes, the lampblack resulting from its combustion is said to make an ink which for brilliance and blackness is superior to that made from firwood. ”

“ On the other hand, the darkest black which the artist could apply would be scarcely sufficient to represent the real illumination of a white object on which the moon shone. For even the deadest black coatings of lamp-black and black velvet, when powerfully lighted, appear grey, as we often enough know to our cost, when we wish to shut off superfluous light. I investigated a coating of lamp-black, and found its brightness to be about one-hundredth that of white paper. The brightest colours of a painter are only about one hundred times as bright as his darkest shades. ”

“ Lamp-black is extensively used in the manufacture of printing ink, as a pigment for oil painting and also for “ebonizing” cabinet work, and in the waxing and lacquering of leather. It is the principal constituent of China ink. ”

“ It is like a live and evil thing, the blackness, running in fear from the light before us, yet following so closely behind. Sometimes I cannot help feeling that, like the Groles, it is just waiting for our last lamp to go out so it can rush in and kill us. In one thing we have been fortunate. Even with only three lamps lighted no one has had the Black Fear. But after this sleep we will burn only two lamps and again the blackness will move closer. It is not a pleasant thought to sleep with. ”

“ Night by night, when the only light in the glen was the school-house lamp, of use at least as a landmark to solitary travellers—who miss it nowadays, for it burns no more—she hovered over him, nor did she deride his hopeless efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray and from gray to white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful because she was not for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so that once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is literature. ”

“ In the earlier myths, as in that of Demeter, it is a torch with which she goes forth to search for her daughter, but in the late myth of Cupid and Psyche it is an oil lamp which Psyche carries, and from which to her grief a drop of hot oil falls on Cupid and awakes him. Terra-cotta lamps have very frequently the name of the maker stamped on the foot. Clay moulds from which the lamps were made exist in considerable numbers.
(A. S. M.)
LAMP-BLACK, a deep black pigment consisting of carbon in a very fine state of division, obtained by the imperfect combustion of highly carbonaceous substances. ”

“ This Lamp is beyond doubt the best Lamp for India. Royal Letters Patent have been granted to Richard Clark, for the recent improvements. In simplicity, in beauty, there is none to equal the Diamond Lamp. It gives the light of fourteen candles, and burns for twelve hours without attention. Is so simple, that it cannot be mismanaged—a wick has been woven expressly for this Lamp, which ensures a brilliant flame. The Diamond Light is tranquil amid the draught of the Punkah, and unaffected by currents from the windows or doors. ”

“ You'll be able to see better in a few minutes, when you get used to the dark. I've got a lamp here, you'll notice."
■ I looked, but scarcely saw it at first—one of those tiny blackout lamps that seems only to make black blacker by contrast. In its almost invisible glow I could glimpse only the vague shadows of furniture and the outline of my companion, who seemed to be slightly built—I couldn't tell any more than that yet.
I heard him cross the room, his shoes squeaking faintly, and I heard glass clink.
"Drink? We can manage a straight one even in the dark, I think." ”

“ It is a sad thing to think of, that when we put the candle out, and step into bed, we become blacker than the blackest negro that was ever emancipated. But without light there can be no colour, for there is no material, so to speak, from which to manufacture it. White light, as we have said before, is made up of red, blue, and yellow, and it is by the absorption of one or all of these that all tints are formed. ”

“ The design of the lamp was admirable in itself, but, in my opinion, what added much to the beauty of the whole, was that round the body of the crystal lamp there was carved in cataglyphic work a lively and pleasant battle of naked boys, mounted on little hobby-horses, with little whirligig lances and shields that seemed made of vine-branches with grapes on them; their postures generally were very different, and their childish strife and motions were so ingeniously expressed that art equalled nature in every proportion and action. ”

“ I have seen a grey blue sky at the earliest moment when street lamps were alight at all, and radiant against the light grey of its invisible and equal clouds an electric lamp has been reared: an electric lamp of cold white light, pure and keen, and armed with intense and splendid arrows that would pierce day itself. Light grey sky and thrilling lamp together make—or so it seems to me—one of the most beautiful sights that eyes can see—the most refined, most severe, and most exquisite. ”

“ Save for the pale, ghostly reflection of a street lamp there was no light, and her hand groped instinctively toward the electric switch, then conquering the impulse, she closed the door and stole forward. Her movements were now swift, cautious, yet fearless. It was as though a long-pent-up energy had at last found its outlet, and the sudden light from the table-lamp lit up a face whose beauty and passionate and stern resolution might have belonged to some classic figure of tragedy. ”

“ Lamp black is the soot produced by burning oil, resin, small coal, resinous woods, coal tar or tallow. It is in the state of very fine powder, works smoothly, is of a dense black color and durable, but dries very slowly in oil. ”

“ Fanciful shapes are equally common in bronze. The standard form of handle consists of a ring for the forefinger and above it a kind of palmette for the thumb. Instead of the palmette is sometimes a crescent, no doubt in allusion to the moon. It would only be with bronze lamps that the cover protecting the flame from the wind could be used, as was the case out of doors in Athens. Such a lamp was in fact a lantern. Apparently it was to the lantern that the Greek word lampas, a torch, was first transferred, probably from a custom of having guards to protect the torches also. ”

“ These lamps are globes of dead white glass in which the charcoal points are fixed. As soon as the sun sinks so low as to render the depths of the water obscure, the lamps are all lighted at the same moment by connecting the wires with the great electric apparatus on shore, and the whole subaqueous space is immediately illuminated as bright as day. The effect of the thousands of lamps hung in every direction is extremely beautiful. Every nook and cranny of the vast space glows with a marvellous brilliancy. ”

“ The Moorfield quacks had always lamps at their doors at night, with round glasses, having the same colours as the balls in their signs, and this custom has been handed down to our day by the chemists, who still have circular, red, green, and yellow bull’s-eye glasses in their lamps.
In Paris, in the sixteenth century, the pastry-cooks used at nights to place a kind of lamp in their windows, which acted as magic lanterns. They were made of transparent paper, covered with rudely-painted figures of men and animals. ”

“ It was enough to make any one say ‘Hallo!’ The impossible, the incredible, was visible to them all. The lamp hung inverted in the air, burning quietly with its flame pointing down. It was as solid, as indisputable as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the Long Dragon bar.
Mr Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp, [Pg 120] ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more or less. Miss Maybridge turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. ”

“ It seemed as though the light that she had called forth from the darkness had melted the beautiful mask which hid her inner self from the eyes of men, and revealed her naked soul incarnate in the evil shape that should have belonged to it.
Suddenly the flame vanished, she turned on the switch of the lamp, placed a platinum cover over the crucible with a pair of light, curved tongs, and, with a quick half-turn, screwed it hermetically down. ”

“ The brightest patch of white on a canvas will look black if you hold it up against the sky. How, then, can the fire of sunshine be depicted at all? Experience shows that it can only be suggested by contrast with shadows almost black. But absolutely black shadows would not be beautiful. Fancy a picture in which the shadows were as black as well-polished boots! Rembrandt had to find out how to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject. ”

“ A lamp had at that instant been brought into one of the front rooms of the house he was contemplating, and the glimpse he thus caught of the interior attracted his eyes and even arrested the gaze of the impatient Edgar. For the woman who held the lamp was no common one, and the face which showed above it was one to stop any man who had an eye for the beautiful, the inscrutable, and the tragic. ”

“ A kerosene lamp is very effective, if placed with the narrow side of the flame toward the screen, the object being to concentrate the light, and cause it to come from as small and yet as brilliant a point as possible. Set the lamp in a box of some kind; a wooden soap box would do, with one side open toward the screen. The box should be painted a dull black inside, or old black cloth may be tacked in as a lining. If the inside of the box is not black, it will reflect the light, and cause the shadows to appear blurred. On no account use a reflector, as this would have the [Pg 123] same effect. ”

“ The pale tints of electric lights, which make every face in a room look ghastly, will affect quite as disastrously every soft color in the furnishings. In ordinary gaslight a pair of white gloves looks yellow, and we have seen Welsbach lamps which threw out a violet-blue illumination, depressing in the extreme. Under a yellow glow, blues, greens, violets and purples are greatly changed. Under a violet glow, yellows and greens are ruined. To see all colors in about the same value that they possess by daylight one must have a light in which no color tone is apparent. ”

“ The light of the lamp falls full upon her face and bust and hands, its shade leaving the rest of her person and almost the whole of the room in a soft shadow. She seems like a luminous figure evoked by the imagination from amid the vague shadows of fear. ”

“ The chalk-cup lamp found by Canon Greenwell in the neolithic flint mines at Grimes Graves, England, perhaps the oldest wick-floating lamp in the world, is not essentially different from the oyster shell filled with lard and provided with wicks that may be found among Virginia negroes today. The Egyptian, Grecian, Phœnician, and Roman lamps, as they have been found in the tombs and as we see them in the museums, are not unlike the lard lamps that were most in use early in the nineteenth century. ”

“ I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.
“An ugly business.”
He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his cheeks; a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His expression was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude might wear. ”

“ These lamps, filled with seal oil, are kept burning day and night till the festival is over. They are believed to light the shades on their return to [pg 052] their old home and back again to the land of the dead. If any one fails to put up a lamp in the clubhouse and to keep it burning, the shade whom he or she desires to honour could not find its way to the place and so would miss the feast. ”

“ From an artistic point of view, one of the worst methods of lighting a room is by pendant lamps, collected in single centres in large numbers. The lights ought to be distributed in different portions of the room, and so shaded that the light is received only by reflection from surrounding objects. Ornamental effects are frequently produced by means of candle lamps in which a small incandescent lamp, imitating the flame of a candle, is placed upon a white porcelain tube as a holder, and these small units are distributed and arranged in electroliers and brackets. ”

“ The lamp must be lit, the loin girded; she must no longer pass among the living as a gentle phantom. She must help all these people who belonged to her; she must by her valour and devotion compensate for what they were denied; she must inspire and fortify. But what was to breathe life into her? Love—even such love as she had for Andrée—had not done it. ”

“ In the same grey volume, which troubled Henry Champney with premonitions, we read, near the beginning of Chapter XVIII., entitled “Light”: “Two lamps have mainly given me what light I have. I suppose many men, if not every man, has known them. One seemed to shine from overhead, a hanging flicker becoming a larger glow,—the Lamp of Knowledge. There are no better moments than when its flame leaps at the opening of a new vista. ”