Lava Lamps: Flowing for Over Fifty Years

– photo courtesy of  lavalamp.co.uk

Well now, what on earth (or space!) is going on here?  Although a current photo, let’s take a timeline walk back to 1965, where we find this rather unassuming building on Irving Park Road here in Chicago:

– photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

Witnessing what can only be thought of as something, ‘out of this world’, two Chicago businessmen saw a strange, odd-looking lamp at a trade show in Belgium.  Securing the rights from the British inventor, the company, “Lava Manufacturing Corporation” set up shop in the building you see in the above photo.

Let’s take a peek inside this, “Lava Lite” (its American name) and see what the brouhaha is all about:

– photo courtesy of howstuffworks.com

In a nutshell, there is a special type of wax contained in a liquid substance that is heated with a light bulb at the bottom of the lamp.  As the wax is heated, it turns into a liquid (in ‘blob’ patterns, I must say) that is less dense than the liquid above it.  When the blobs reach the top of the lamp, they begin to cool, down they sink, and the process begins again.  The blobs resemble molten lava; okay, I guess that’s a bit of a stretch, but I assume that’s how our spectral art received its name in the first place.

– photo courtesy of s3.favim.com

Oh say can you see all the colors of wax (and sparkly stuff, too) floating around in their lava-like formations!  I daresay that is literally the tip of the waxy iceberg.  These lamps come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.  I find it rather amusing that the interest in these spacey looking lamps has really, ‘waxed and waned’ over the decades (don’t worry, you needn’t groan at my lame attempt at humor in that sentence; I’ve done it for you)!

Hippies of the ’60s, college students, and many who simply find it a decorative piece of the peculiar over the past five decades have lit up their lives with these rather spaced-out luminaries.  The Smithsonian Institute considers it an, “icon”.  Have you ever seen one?  They are mesmerizing, to say the least.  It’s difficult to say what clinched the deal for our Chicago businessmen all those years ago; was it the blobular (not a word, but I quite like it) shapes of the wax?  Were they visionaries who saw the beauty in the bizarre?  Or was it good ‘ol fashioned luck that played upon their sensibilities and burnished our North American shores with the now iconic light?  Hard to say, really.

– photo courtesy of media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com

Do you recall my comment that Lava Lamps come in all kinds of shapes, colors, and sizes?  Take a look at this:

– photo courtesy of api.ning.com/files

I can only imagine the conversation in that room:  “Today we have three blobs for a nickel!”

Despite the fact Lava Lamps for the U.S. market are now made in China, I thought it rather fitting to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of its manufacturing inauguration here in Chicago.

Happy Anniversary, Lava Lamp! May your blobs continue to glow with the flow! 🙂