1910 Leeds Wolf-Patterson lamp: a fusion of Wolf and Baxendale

This lamp, from about 1910, mixes Wolf and Baxendale parts. It’s a snapshot of two firms coming together.

According to the owner’s account, Wolf of Leeds took over the Baxendale lamp business around this time. Independent records of that sale are thin, so treat it as the collector’s history rather than settled fact.

The lamp has a manual wick adjuster and an electric relighter, a spark device for relighting the flame without opening the lamp. A second lamp in the photos is a similar model whose relighter is now missing. Both have cage-bar hasps, though there’s no sign that staples were ever fitted to the vessels.

The corrosion round the badge

Look at the corrosion around the badge. Andy puts it down to acid in the soldering flux used to fix the badge on. It’s the same thing you see on copper plumbing when surplus flux isn’t cleaned off.

The odd bonnet

The last photos show a full-brass Baxendale lamp from before the sale, with the same strange bonnet extension. Perhaps the bonnets were ordered too short for the gauzes and extended to fit, but nobody really knows.

Some background. Grace’s Guide records that Friemann & Wolf’s British agency was liquidated in 1912 and re-formed in Sheffield by William Maurice, who bought the business outright in 1916. It traded as the Wolf Safety Lamp Co. from Heeley, Sheffield.