Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate

This lamp was created by combining the cap, lava, liquid and base from an Aristocrat model 1120 (Aug. 1974) with the globe and coil from a Century model 100 (Mar. 1982). The globe that came with the Aristocrat was full of bubbles. It looked absolutely horrible to me. On the other hand, the Century globe was nearly flawless. I simply couldn’t resist putting the fantastic looking goo from the Aristocrat in a globe that matched its richness and flow characteristics.

The flow of this lamp is astounding. I’ve never owned one that works quite the way this one does. It has two phases of cycling that seem to play out over a period of about 15 minutes. The first phase is a column of lava. Hot lava runs up and down the inside of the column as the column changes shape. Sometimes the column becomes so skinny at a point that you would think a blob was going to snap off of it. Not so, the hot lava comes up from below and swells it in the narrowest point and fills it again. The lava just snakes and dances in myriad ways during this phase. Eventually, the column breaks and it starts making blobs. The lava blobs are quite unique to my collection as well. Colder lava falls out below the blobs giving it the appearance of lava raining in the globe. This is gorgeous when it happens with 3 or 4 blobs of lava at once. The pic seen here is a good example of the effect.

Just so you will know, the process of setting up, transferring contents and tearing down the equipment took right at 7 hours to complete. It’s a real labor of love and you have to keep the work environment and all equipment and components clean or you might wind up with a few stray hairs in your lamp fluid.

I will be doing a post on the following topic under the category of 'Problems & Questions’: ‘Removing Vintage Caps from 52oz. Globes’. After doing a little reading on this site I discovered that some of us are cracking these nearly impossible to replace caps when removing them. I’ll tell you how I successfully removed them in the post. Hopefully, word will get around and this will be the fix to the problem or it will inspire someone to figure out an even better way. That’s what we are here for.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. They were selected from 80 photos I took, hoping to get some interesting shots of the motion.

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Comment by LavaMeister on March 3, 2013 at 5:27pm

Thanks for the comment!  It has a place of reverence in my kitchen where I can enjoy it every day.  I can't imagine ever finding another lamp that is so clear and fully functional.  If some of the posts I have seen are correct this one is going to be around for a long time.  I heard it's hard to kill a Century/Aristocrat from this era.

Comment by LavaMeister on March 3, 2013 at 5:25pm

No doubt I'll be saving the globe.  If nothing else, it'll make a great project incubator.  LOL

Comment by Jonas Clark-Elliott on February 18, 2013 at 12:07am

That is one seriously pretty Aristocrat. Great job on that. Save that globe; some people love the little 'stars' that bubbles look like.

Comment by LavaMeister on February 17, 2013 at 11:00pm

Thanks Brad.  I had no idea it would be one of my best lamps until I transferred the goo and liquid to a brutally clear globe.  Gotta love it when success turns your way.

Comment by Brad on February 16, 2013 at 2:26am

the way you describe the flow characteristics of this lamp are exactly what i look for in a lamp.  the alternating column and blob flow looks awesome.  it seems like many of the pre-china lamps have this characteristic, especially lamps made in the 90's.  nice lamp!

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