(Lava Chat)

Talk about French boilers here!

This is a thread for owners and lovers of the unique French liquid motion lamps collectively known as "boilers." Tell about what you've got, how you got it, what it does, near-misses, broken arrivals, etc.

Quick boiler primer, referring to my illustrated list:

Basic boilers either fill with liquid, "boil," drain and start over, or fill with liquid and then "percolate" steadily.

Glitter boilers place a boiler inside an outer globe filled with swirling glitter.

Fountain boilers use the rising vapor bubbles to push the rising liquid through jets.

Bubblers are already completely full of liquid. Bubbles of vapor are generated near the bottom and they rise to the top. Some bubblers have beads or rocks in the bottom to break up the bubbles.

Lava bubblers function like bubblers, except that they also contain a thick, usually brightly-colored oil, which rests at the bottom. It coats the rising bubbles, then the oil droplets float back down. Some have indents to bounce the bubbles around. Others have glass beads in the oil, producing more, smaller bubbles and sprays of oil.

The only boiler I own is pictured. It stands nearly two feet tall. I purchased it for $150 from a Tacoma, WA antique shop. They bought the contents of a shop in London which had imported and sold scientific and laboratory glassware. This boiler had been on the owner's desk. I'm pretty sure the companies which made boilers also made lab glassware, as they use the same techniques. It's the only one I've heard of or seen which reached the US by means other than being ordered off eBay by a lava collector. It takes about twenty minutes to fill, after which vapor rushes up the coil, "boils" violently in the globe, empties most of the way, and the process repeats!

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