Imperial Restoration

[Critter]

All,

I am the lucky guy who purchased Jim's Imperial. This is the before pic. The stand was a wreck and had been painted a flat white with some gold "antiquing" paint on top of that. The globe, while never opened, was low on fluid and it would not flow. This is the state that Jim purchased it in he would not do this to a lamp of this caliber so don't blame him for the state of the lamp in this pic.

Before:

This is a picture of the Imperial today. I've stripped and refinished the stand. I restored the metal feet, cleaned up the top and metal base and without opening the bottle was able to top off the fluid while tweaking fluid density. I did this with a hypodermic needle via the top vent hole in the cap. That took endless hours. The lamp looks as close to new as you can find and flows like a champ. I did refinish the wood top but went on and had a solid walnut top done up to give the lamp a true "piece of quality furniture" appearance. In this pic is the solid top, I have wrapped and stored the walnut veneered particle board original top. I'm proud of my work on this iconic sixties lamp.

After:

I hope you all enjoy the pics....I've spent a lot of time, energy and of course green on this lamp restoration.

Crit

[ChuckM]

Wow, congratulations! That is one fine looking lamp... museum piece really. Thanks for sharing the photo with us.

[Mmm...]

Absolutely beautiful! An impressive restoration! The legs on that thing look very interesting. Wonder what kind of wood that it?

[Critter]

Mmm,

Those are the original legs and they are solid black walnut. You are correct in that they are interesting as there is nice varied grain to the wood. I cannot believe anyone ever painted this lamp's stand.

[Jim]

Nicely done Critter.  You were destined to own this lamp.

[LotsofLava]

Wow, that is awesome!!!

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

Beautiful work!

[Critter]

Thanks Jonas!

[Tim Gill]

Grate work, really made it look good as new. 

Must have taken a lot of pacaince to get it flowing without fully opening the globe, I doubt I could have done that without going crazy.

[Critter]

Thanks Tim. I think I might have gone crazy if I wasn't already. LOL

[Jim]

Ummm, yeah... I'm pretty sure you were already crazy going in. 

Critter said:

I think I might have gone crazy if I wasn't already. LOL

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

What's the actual color? Would you say this is probably an orange/yellow?

I've seen catalogs listing these in red/clear, orange/clear, orange/yellow, green/clear, green/blue, and Champagne Mist.

[Critter]

This is a red yellow. I too think it is unusual to have a factory yellow fluid in an Imperial as they did not advertise it as available that way with red wax.